Unpacking The NYC Marathon With Cedric King: A Story of Service & Sacrifice

Cedric King is a former Army Master Sergeant, Purple Heart recipient, and double amputee who has run more than 30 marathons on running blades. We recorded the day after the NYC Marathon, where I served as his run support and found a way to get out of my own self-obsession and make it about somebody else. We discuss the IED blast in Afghanistan that took his legs, his struggle with painkillers, his father, and why being of service is the answer. And I try to explain why running beside him was an absolute, unforgettable peak experience. Cedric’s positive energy is infectious. This whole marathon journey left me hopeful for humanity. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Kohler Health: Get 10% off Dekoda with code RICHROLL10👉🏼https://www.kohler.com/kohlerhealth Norda: Experience the ultimate in trail running innovation👉🏼https://www.nordarun.com TORRAS: Get 15% off the TORRAS Q3 Air Pro case with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://torraslife.com/products/iphone-17-pro-max-case-ostand-q3-air-pro Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://stories.rivian.com/richroll WHOOP: Join now and get one month free👉🏼https://www.join.whoop.com/Roll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 1:30Speaker 00

  So as many of you may know, 18 months ago, I underwent spinal fusion, which was a pretty significant and intense operation that prompted my surgeon at the time to say, Rich, you can forget about a future with running. All I remember about that moment was thinking to myself, forget that. And it was then and there that I set this goal to complete the 2026 New York City Marathon. And to prove him wrong, I proceeded to get to work. For the first year, my movement was restricted to walking only, very slow walking. That's all I did was walk. In fact, I didn't run at all until about six months ago, starting

• 2:14Speaker 00

  with a very slow single mile. And from there, and out of caution to protect my, my still to this day, healing spine, I restrained my quote-unquote run training to only two five-mile treadmill run walks per week, maximum, nothing more. So to say that I was unprepared to run 26.2 miles last Sunday is quite an understatement. But I towed the starting line anyway, and I didn't do it to announce some kind of comeback to running or to some return to form, but instead to simply celebrate turning 60, to enjoy this remarkable day

• 2:54Speaker 00

  in New York City, and to mark my ongoing recovery from this surgery. And beyond that, and most importantly, I wanted to signify a new and different relationship that I'm forming with this form of movement I love, this sport of running, one that is much more about service and connection than it is about ego-gratifying performance goal. And in the interest of that aim, I decided to join my friend and Go Brewing founder, Joe Chura, to spend those 26.2 miles supporting someone else, to help somebody else cross that finish line. That person was former US Army Master Sergeant and double amputee athlete Cedric

• 3:37Speaker 00

  King. Together, Joe and I guided Cedric successfully across the finish line to celebrate Cedric, who also happened to set a new personal course PR. But it's all about what happened along the way, and what happened forever changed me. It was a day better than anything I could have personally scripted, the best day, on the best day to be in the best city in the world, Marathon Day in New York City. And so today, I wanted to share that day with you and more, all from the perspective of one of the most inspirational humans I've ever met. Please enjoy the infectious, positive energy of Cedric King, your new best friend and possibly even your new life coach.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Dude, we went on a journey yesterday, my friend. How are you feeling, buddy?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Very sore, very sore.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Understandably.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  My back and this leg right here is, is, uh, it's, uh, it's stinging a little bit, it's stinging a little bit.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  I have no doubt. You dug really deep. There was a question mark near the end there where I thought, uh-oh, you know?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Is he digging too deep? Has he dug too deep too soon? But you pulled it out, man, and we got you a PR.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yes, you did. This was a course PR. But every time I finish a race, I do want something else to work on. And because yesterday wasn't a perfect race, that gives me a little bit something to go into the tool shed and work on for the next few months.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  So what did you take away?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  I know that I cannot hit the gas on the last mile. I can't give, and I know that's something that we always say, you gotta, you gotta empty the tank. And yeah, you do. But you do need to be smart about when you empty the tank. I emptied the tank maybe about a mile and three quarters too early, and we're going downhill and we are moving. And it felt terrific until it didn't.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  And then you gotta dig deep.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Our friend Joe Chura, who also was part of our three-person team.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Founder of Go Brewing, shout out Go Brewing, shout out Joe, he's here.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  He told me many times over the course of the day, like, our job is to, you know, restrain him. Like, I have, because Joe has, has paced you and supported you now through 10 marathons, I think, 10 or 11 marathons or something like that?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yes, he has.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  And he's like, Cedric gets a little excited, you know? We gotta stick to the plan, and we gotta reel him in occasionally. But in that final stretch, I mean, we were in Central Park, and you found a new gear.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  I did.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  And you started to throw down pretty hard, and I was like, oh, damn.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  We were doing like eight-minute miles or something.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  I didn't realize, like, oh, he's got, he's had a whole other gear the whole time, and now is the moment he's gonna throw down. But you, uh, you, uh, you spit it out a little too soon, you know? And then you ran out of gas, and then you really, you really like met your maker. And we still, that was when we were kind of making that turn onto 57th Street.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  And we have that long stretch before you go into the park, and the wheels were, were coming off.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Wheels were coming off, but I think that goes back to what we were talking about coming up First Avenue. We're at like mile 20, we're in the middle of 22 to 23. And you look over at me and you say, hey, remember, man, this is what you asked for. And this was a place where I am losing energy, masses of amounts of energy, and I don't have anything left. But at that point, you did remind me, and you put purpose in the pain by saying, yo, remember this way you want to be at. Not, not tongue-in-cheek and not making light of the situation, but you just reminded me, hey, this is exactly where you figure out

• 7:37Speaker 01

  who you are. Not at the beginning of the race where you got tons of energy, and not in the middle of the race where people are cheering. At the end of the race where there are people that are cheering, but you got no energy. You got nothing left in the tank. And now you get to figure out who you really are. And that was where I was like, okay, yeah, this does suck, but now that pain has a purpose behind it.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  So what did you, what did you learn about yourself when you met yourself in that state?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  That, yeah, it sucks. And yeah, it's painful, but I don't have to quit. I don't, like, there are people that were running, they were our group that was consistently with us the last four or five miles. The same crew, the same guy, the old guy, I was like.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  I put a bead on that dude's back. I was like, we're gonna finish before him. That's probably why I hit the gas. So I was like, he's not finishing before me. He was somebody's great-granddad. I was like, uh-uh, nah, not you, buddy.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Not happening.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  But hey, shout out to him wherever he is. I hope he's watching. But I found out that I don't have to quit just because I'm tired. And listen, listen, I don't want this to sound so cliché-ish, but dude, when you are out of gas, you can make compelling argument to tap out, because there's nothing left in the tank. And you can say, hey, man, you gave it the best you had.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  And no one's gonna say boo.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  And nobody, look, to me especially, everybody's gonna still, they're gonna clap if I tap out. I'm gonna still get, I'm gonna still get lauded if I tap out.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Doesn't matter what you do.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  No matter what I do.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  You walk into the room.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Hey, but think about it, but think about it. At that point in time, I still gotta say, bro, you didn't have to tap out just because you're tired, just because the tank was empty. You didn't have to tap out. You could have walked to that next stoplight, and you could have recharged and gave it all you had again. We saw guys out there, I don't know if you saw this. There's two guys out there specifically. One, I pointed out to you. This guy did the whole marathon in a wheelchair, backwards, one leg that he still had functional. And if that dude don't have to quit.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Backwards Bob?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Backwards.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Or backwards Bill?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Backwards Bill, hey.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  I mean, first of all, he looks like he's 85 years old.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Maybe 90. But this guy was doing the whole marathon backwards, without the sight of him knowing where he's going. He just has the guides to keep him from going into the walls.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Backwards in a wheelchair.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Backwards in a wheelchair.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Pushing himself with just one leg.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. So it goes to my brain thinking, okay, he's tired, and he doesn't. So it's possible that I could be tired, and I don't quit. And hey, look, whoever's listening to this, maybe you're tired, but the truth is, you don't have to tap out. You could take a break, wake up tomorrow morning, and give it the best that you got. Is that gonna help you win the race? Maybe, maybe not. But you will be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, golly, I'm proud of who I see in the other side of this mirror right here.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  You said it wasn't a perfect race. I don't know that any race is ever perfect, but what did you take away from that experience specifically? That you're gonna bring into your tool shed to be better next time?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I had some nutrition fixes that I did. I did BCAAs. I did those disgusting ketone shots. Sorry if I'm losing sponsors, but those disgusting ketone shots did help. We missed two ketone shot alarms. I set them on my watch and I just, I forgot them. I could have used those, but I was like, ah, I'm feeling great. I don't need to do it. And sometimes that is, that's one of your biggest mistakes where you say, hey, look, I'm feeling great. I could skip it, but it come back to hurt you later. So I can incorporate making sure that I'm good about.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  But you can also empower your support crew. Like I actually didn't know what your feeding schedule was. If you had said at the beginning or took me aside and said, like, make sure every hour I do this, every half an hour I do this. And then I could have, you could have offloaded that responsibility, but I didn't, I didn't actually know.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had four watches between, if you had two, we had, we had four or five watches between the three of us. And I was using both of my alarms. Joe was using two sets of alarms on his. I'm sure I could have told you, hey, look, I need this ketone shot every 90 minutes. I need this, this, you know, this Advil, an hour out from finish, you know? It would help things be better, but that's a great thing. I never wanted to run a perfect race because I always want to be working on something better, you know?

• 12:22Speaker 00

  We're in Central Park and you asked me, you're like, what's your GPS watch say? Like, how, how, because that's a little bit of a, you know, a bit of a mind game, you know? Mine was almost, had said we had run more, almost a mile more than the course. So you're thinking you're done. You look at your watch and you're like, oh, man.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  That's one of the biggest weights that I carried the whole day yesterday. Because the GPS in my, in my Bluetooth, I was constantly hearing, we're at the mile. When I could see the mile is actually way down the street. So my GPS saying, we're at mile 17. And in real life, mile 17 is nowhere in sight. And that was so mentally debilitating, man. I'm feeling like I'm getting the, the rush that we're there.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  But I'm not getting, I'm not seeing the satisfaction of being there. And that, every single mile, I had to deal with, no, we're not there yet. And I had to find ways to say, okay, this is just a segmentary goal that we're getting to. This is not the actual goal. We'll be there in seven tenths of a mile. But constantly having to deal with that, that was tough. And I, man, that was one of the things why I looked over at you. I said, hey, man, what's your GPS say? I was like, okay, he's dealing with it too.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  But when you know that you're not in it alone, it kind of gave me a little bit of strength to know that, hey, I didn't even want to ask Joe. I know Joe's marathon, his, his GPS is probably dead on. But I just wanted to know, I wouldn't end it by myself, man.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  What would it have done to your mindset to know that Joe, while we're, you know, kind of going through this whole experience? He's on his phone redesigning the Achilles website.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  That was the other bane of my existence yesterday. I was like.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Literally like using Claude code and he's like reworking the website for Achilles International, which is the organization that, you know, kind of put us, oversees the disabled athlete kind of endurance.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  100% great organization, Achilles International. They are the reason for probably my second turnaround in life. For you, you had a turnaround in your life and it meant so much to your well-being. It meant so much to your self-identity, to who you could really become. With all your accolades that you had in the beginning, this moment in your life happens and now you find a new rich. Well, Achilles was my moment. It wasn't just the blast, but it was after the blast. I find a community of people that helped me find a new and better me. And we are running yesterday 20, 21 miles.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  And throughout this whole day, Joe is redeveloping their website interface. While we are, me and you are over there like,

• 15:34Speaker 01

  are we there yet? Okay, time. Joe's like, all right, Claude, here's the next prompt that you gotta do. I'm like, what a dirtbag. I love that guy, man. He's like my brother, man.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  So Joe has supported you through 10, 11 marathons? You have completed 32, 33 marathons?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yep, 30, 32. 11 Boston's, five Disney's, five Chicago's, four New York's, two Berlin's, one Tokyo, one London and one Sydney.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  And you did the half Ironman?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've done two half Ironmans. I've come short on three full Ironmans. And obviously I know somebody between the two of us has done the world championship, which I will do one day. I, I saw the video of you running the lava, what is it? The lava?

• 16:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, the lava fields. Yeah, on the big island. That was it. Ultraman. That wasn't the Kona World Championship. I've never done that race.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Talk your talk, boy. Talk your talk, man. That's what you're supposed to do.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  No, I just didn't want any confusion. I've never competed at the world championships of Ironman. That's a whole different thing. I did a different race there. Yeah. But we're talking about you, buddy. I want to take it back.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  You know, I am interviewing you part on the slack.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  That's all right. I'll let you get away with it a little bit, but just not too much. You mentioned how, you know, Achilles kind of came into your life and, and, you know, gave you, helped, helped to birth this new life that you're experiencing now, that where you get to inspire people and participate in these challenges. I mean, out on the course, it was unreal, like how much support you were getting from the crowd. It was an honor to support you and it was also just a delight to participate in this event, which is the best day to be in New York City, the best city in the world. Like New York City is undefeated and we had perfect conditions. The crowds turned out, they were unbelievable. And just the entire way, it was like Cedric, Cedric.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  The amount of support that you were getting, like it was, it was such a cool thing, you know, to be there. It just gave me hopefulness for humanity, to see the unity and the community that in this time of division and acrimony where everybody seems to be fighting online, like, oh, this is, this is real people. You know, when they get together and kind of orient themselves around a single purpose and goal.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  You and I were just, we talked about it briefly out there, but this is exactly the medicine that our humanity needs. It's strangers from different ethnicities, strangers from different countries cheering on each other. And cheering on people that are really trying hard to accomplish something. Do you remember that? Like, it's so cool today to not try hard. It's so, it's almost like, it's almost cool to be nonchalant about something. But for this one day of the year, we saw 60,000 people trying really, really hard to defeat the voice on the inside of them that is desperately wanting them to be smaller and to be less.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  And for you to have a stranger to come out there and to cheer you on, that's never met you before, that just wants to see you win, bro, that's, that's the gift that we all need. This is the true medicine of our culture, not just, not just athletics, not just running, not just fitness, but the spirit behind it. Let me come out and cheer you on and help you win your, your race. That's beautiful, man. It'll go right over your head if you're not into this, if you weren't there. But just listen to what I'm saying. This is exactly what we need in our culture and humanity today.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Cheering on other people to see someone else win. That's what we need, man.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. Fundamentally, when you get to the brass tacks of everything, every single person just wants to be seen and understood. And that experience yesterday was sort of that in action. Like I see you. I feel you. I understand you. I'm here for you. I want you to win. I'm, I'm, I'm here to support you. You know, like, just to feel that experience and then what it feels like to support the, you know, the crowd that's supporting people. Or in my case, like supporting you, like when you're, when you kind of get out of your own self-obsession and make it about somebody else, like that's where you discover happiness.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  It's not through chasing all of these ego gratifying things or trying to, you know, like surround yourself with a bunch of material items or prestigious jobs, et cetera. It's like being of service, man. That is the answer.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  I really, I really wanted so much this weekend. I wanted to get a jacket, right? And I wanted to get some cool merch to take back.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  But one of the things that paled in comparison to all the things that I wanted is exactly what I got. I got a chance to see you be out there on a course where so many people walked up to you and just said, man, you changed my life. And, and I've heard that before. But to know that what you have gone through was medicine to someone else is such a blessing. And I'd like to think that maybe what I've gone through, losing both my legs, was medicine to someone else. Yes, it was poison to me almost, but it was, it was healing somebody else. So maybe I didn't go through this in vain and maybe I didn't, maybe this didn't happen for nothing.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  And maybe what happened to you didn't happen for nothing.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, you have said that what happened to you, you now consider your finest hour.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Not because I was, not because I was super brave and not because I was in shape and not because I didn't feel the fear. It was, hey, I got a second chance, man. I got a second chance. There's so many dudes, this, this week, we're going to celebrate Veterans Day in about five days, five or six days, we're going to celebrate Veterans Day. And I know that most of the people that are going to not be here or not going to be the way they used to be, those are the heroes. I was one of the lucky ones that got a second chance, man. And look, I'm trying to make the best out of it just by being the best that I can be. I got a second

• 22:21Speaker 01

  shot, man. What am I doing complaining about minutia? This is, this is the true blessing. This is my finest hour. I got a second chance. Let's make the most of it.

• 22:36Speaker 00

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• 23:21Speaker 00

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• 24:07Speaker 00

  Everybody and anybody who spends time outdoors knows the moment. You're reaching for a hold, you're pulling your phone out for that shot at the top. And what happens? It like slips out of your hands. And there's that half second of slow motion where all you can do is watch it fall and you're powerless. Well, Taurus built the Q3 Air Pro for exactly that half second. They developed it with legendary climber Tommy Caldwell. So you know it's super legit. And the engineering is really smart. Instead of making a thick, brick-like case like its competitors, Taurus built this ingenious dual airbag cushion system. They call it Air Duet, which cradles your phone with an outer layer that catches the initial

• 24:48Speaker 00

  impact and an inner layer that disperses what's left. You can actually see the airbag structure, these buffers on the outside here, which for me is great because I have a habit of dropping my phone, which I did the other day on a sharp rock, no less. Pretty convinced that my iPhone was a goner, but amazingly, thanks to Taurus, it was absolutely fine. Here is a detail I'd flag, the built-in magnetic stand. Prop it up to follow a workout, frame a shot, hands-free, navigate, or charge wirelessly, then it folds right back into the case. And it's still slim enough for everyday life. For listeners of the show, Taurus is offering 15% off your order of the Taurus Q3 Air Pro when you enter the code RICHROLL at tauruslife.com.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  Well, we're kind of dancing around it. So let's go directly towards it. You're in Afghanistan. It's summer of 2012. Walk me through exactly what happened.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Just like every day in Afghanistan. And look, just to let you know, I'm no tough guy, man. I'm not, I'm not one of the, the super duper tough guys out there. You got guys that are way more heroic than me. But this, this particular summer, 2012, we're doing a reconnaissance of a building.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  You're, you're a master sergeant in the army.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  At the time, I wasn't a master sergeant.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Oh, you weren't?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  I, I was a sergeant first class in the 82nd Airborne Division. Oh, 82nd. Rangers lead the way. I'm an airborne ranger. And sure enough, we're doing a simple reconnaissance on a building. The Taliban had been using this little hut or this little shack to store their arms and their explosives and all that stuff. And we were just supposed to go and just find validity that this was the place. We go in there and man, we hit the jackpot. It's like ammo right over there. It's like wires, you know, like, I'm not trying to teach people how to build bombs, but it's like bomb making material in this room. And we

• 26:56Speaker 01

  had the jackpot. It was almost like, hey, you got everything done at your job within the first hour. You're going to get off early today. Sure enough, we're taking pictures, we're sending all the photos and images up to headquarters. And it was going so great, Rich, that I just said, hey, look, hey, I'm going to go outside and I'm going to let the guys on the outer perimeter know that it's time to go. I just make a slight movement to my right. And in a split second, it feels like, in the split second,

• 27:29Speaker 01

  like I'm, I've been tossed in a fire. The loudest sound that I've ever heard blows both my eardrums out. The overpressure punctures my lung cavity. I'm being, I'm in the air. I'd never had a concussion before, but it, it felt like time was slowing down, like super duper slow. All of a sudden, the time comes right back to normal. I'm laying on the ground and I don't know what, what had happened. I don't know quite how bad it was. So I just tried to stand up like normal. It was almost like if you ever, I skated before and you slipped and fell down, you tried to stand back up. But, but you can't get

• 28:10Speaker 01

  your, you can't get your grip quite, it was just like that. The medic runs over to me and everything sounds like this now. Stop, slow down. Everything's muffled.

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Muffled, yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Because I can't hear the way that I could before. I got like fluid coming out of my ears. And the medic wants me to just stay, stay on the ground. Comes over and he takes a tourniquet, starts putting a tourniquet on my legs. I never thought about looking down, but this is the first time I just glanced down. And you see your shoes right here? You got these shoelaces right here?

• 28:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  These, these are sort of like the similar shoelaces that I had on my boots. These shoelaces were like in little pieces all over the ground. And I had canvas boots. The pieces of the boot were like, it looked like somebody put them in a shredder. They were all over the ground. And now the sand that was brownish beige, now it's like pink. And now I could start to smell the, the blood. Have you ever bit your tongue before and you kind of taste that metallic taste? It smells like that. It smells like that all around me. And I know that I'm running out of time.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Do you feel the pain or is the adrenaline just coursing and you're just in this surreal?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  It's an instantaneous pain. It feels like I'm on fire for like the first probably five minutes. Because it's shrapnel, it's extremely hot that's blown through all of this, this flesh skin. So every piece of shrapnel is, I mean, I don't know if you've been shot before, but it's like, it's, it's like hot pieces of metal that are all, that are all in my body. And they're cooling down, but not soon enough though.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  So it's agony, but I do remember starting to lose conscious. I can't, I can't inhale like I normally would because the lung, the lungs had been punctured. Every inhale that I do get, it's not a full inhale. Maybe it's like 60% or 40% or something like that. So as soon as I inhale, I need to do it again because I'm running out of air.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  And breaths are getting shorter. And now you feel the view is this wide. But if you continue to hyperventilate, you're gonna start seeing this, this wide field of view do this. It's starting to get dark on the edges. And I know I'm running out of time. I know I am, man. And I don't know how much, I don't know if I got five minutes left. I don't know, two minutes left. I don't know what it is. But, but I do remember them trying to get the helicopter. But when they tried to get the helicopter, I guess the, the ISIS or the Taliban, whoever the insurgents were that were on the ground, they were trying to shoot the helicopter out of the air.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Uh, by the grace of God, man, by, by the grace of God almighty, I get on the helicopter. Me, the interpreter and another one of my soldiers are on the helicopter. And we get to the nearest hospital. It's almost like MASH. Have you ever seen MASH before? Maybe some of the young guns that are listening to this right, maybe you ain't never seen the show called MASH, but it was just like the opening credits of MASH. I'm coming over a mountain range and I'm landing at the nearest field hospital. And there are doctors and nurses that are running out on the tarmac to come and get me out of the gurney. And I go into this, into this tent and I slip into a coma. I have no recollection over the next eight days, man.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  But in that eight days, uh, I obviously, uh, lose both my legs.

• 31:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, they tried to save the legs. They couldn't. And you wake up eight days later, uh, and are told that your legs are no longer. Where did you wake up?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  I wake.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  Did they, they take you back to the States or?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  They did. So I, I went from Kandahar to Bagram, from Bagram to Landstuhl, Germany, from Landstuhl, Germany to DC, from DC to Bethesda, Maryland.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  So you, it was quick to Walter Reed?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  I, I say, well, eight, eight days. Yeah, it's with a few stops in between. But this is just, I, I have no recollection of any of that stuff. I saw a picture, I, I, I, obviously I woke up with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star on my chest or, or somewhere in my bags or somewhere close to the hospital bed. But I, I don't remember being awarded them, but I, I have like the, the certificates and it's in my records and stuff. But I don't remember any of that stuff. But I wake up in a hospital room in Bethesda, Maryland and not really knowing where I'm at. It's the first week of August and I really don't even know that my legs are gone. I know that I had injured my legs, but because phantom sensations, I don't, I don't have any reason to feel that there are no toes there,

• 32:59Speaker 01

  no shins there, no, no calf there, because I still feel toes. It's just they're not there.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  How did you take the news?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  That's the lowest, that's, that's the lowest point in my life. That's the lowest point in my life. I'm not a crier, man. I, I, I struggle to really tap in and, and, and be emotional in the moments where I probably should feel where I'm supposed to feel. But in that moment, every weight of, of pain, of, of embarrassment, of shame, of anger, it all culminated in that moment. I just, I yelled, I screamed. They, they had a feeding tube inside me and I remember taking it out. It's, I couldn't take it anymore. I was just sobbing uncontrollably. Because in my mind, how could this happen to me, man?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Not that I would want it to happen to anybody else, Rich, but golly, man, why me? And why now? Both legs?

• 34:00Speaker 00

  How old were you?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  I just, it's right before my 34th birthday. So it's 30, right before my 35th birthday, I was 34 years old.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  I mean, the fear and the pain, that's understandable. What, what's the shame piece about?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  I am a, I'm a, at the time, I'm a Sergeant First Class in the US military. I should, I, I should be promoted to Command Sergeant Major within a few years. No, not a lot of senior guys get injured on, on patrols.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  But it's not like you messed up.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  I feel like I sort of did, and I'll tell you why. Uh, in Afghanistan, there's procedures to where you, uh, where you can kind of like track where the bomb would be at. And we use, we use sensors, but because Afghanistan has so much shrapnel and screws and soda cans, trash everywhere. So we just had them turn down the sensitivity because if, we'd still be on that patrol. It's just so much there. We just kept getting hits. And I just felt like, man, why, why me, man? Why? This doesn't happen to anybody. I got a, I got a wife, I got daughters.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Like how in the world am I going to be a dad again? How am I gonna protect my family? I'm gonna walk funny from now on. I'm going to, I'm gonna be in a wheelchair. I'm, I'm, that's not me. Why that? No. I'm gonna need my wife to push me around in a wheelchair? No, I'm gonna need her to drive me places. I'm, I'm a guy's guy. I'm a ranger, man. I'm not supposed to be getting pushed around in a wheelchair. I'm a ranger, man. I'm supposed to be jumping out of airplanes and, and walking up mountains and fighting Taliban, man. I'm not supposed to be in a hospital? I'm supposed to be out there with my guys.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  How long did you like wallow in that state?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  If we're just being honest, I was still, I, I struggled, I was still in that state. Yesterday is a prime example, man. I am duking it out with somebody's great granddad on mile 24. And he's got the worst form, but he's so consistent. I'm like, what am I doing? Like, it's part of this ego we talked about yesterday. I don't know if you remember it. But there's a part on the inside of me that still does not come to grips with me being a double amputee.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Part of me is like, yo, if I get these legs back at mile 10, I am going to cook the rest of this field. Which is also why on the downhills, I, I love going fast. When we were going downhill, I love picking up the pace.

• 37:02Speaker 00

  You were cooking.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  When I am going that fast, it, it makes me feel like I'm back. Or, or, or maybe this is what it used to feel like. It, it helps me feel like maybe, maybe like I'm in a time machine. I can go back and I could feel the way that I used to feel again.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  I appreciate the honesty. Cause it would be easy for you to just say like, now it's just about like me being an example for other people and showing them that they can do X, Y, and Z. Not that that's not central to what you are doing and what you're about, but to

• 37:36Speaker 01

  I still got ego.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  Have the vulnerability to admit like, actually like, I still just wanna feel like I'm normal again.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  And that's, that's one of the times in my life where I feel like I'm Cedric again. I'm, I'm that guy. I'm pre-injury. Yesterday, I don't know if you remember it, but when we were coming into Harlem, there's like a, there's like a, it's like a bridge that's going downhill. And I was sag, I was lagging behind you and Joe for a little bit. But I ran up to you. Once I saw that bridge go down, I was like, all right, let's go, boys. And I couldn't go far, but on that downhill, man, I felt like 34 again. I felt terrific, man. If, if anybody, if anybody could go back and feel 10 years younger, you would.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  And, and in those moments, I feel, I feel like I'm 34 again, man.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  But not for nothing, you also said to me a couple of times over the course of the day, look around, look what's happening, look what we get to do. None of this would be part of my life had that not happened to me. And I have, like you were expressing gratitude for having this life where you get to do these things. Like who knows what, what you would be doing?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  Had your life proceeded normally and you're in a different situation. And my sense was that like, you feel as if your life has so much greater depth and meaning. And you have this purpose that animates you and drives you. And, and I could feel the thankfulness for that.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  And just please, please, please, if you're listening to this interview, please, I'm gonna say this with as much, like be careful with this. I look at this now as a gift. Okay? And I don't know what someone's going through that's listening to this. But the moment I began to look at this as a gift, life changed. It stopped being, this was a penalty that I paid. And this was a curse that was put upon me. And now that I look at it as a gift, that's the way that life delivers it to me. I get to go and run with people like yourself. I get to go and run all over the world.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Or I, I get sometimes to have people come up to me in the airport and just wanna hug me. Or somebody say, hey, man, listen, can you make a video for my aunt? She just lost her leg. Could you just give her some inspiration, please? Can you just let her know everything's gonna be all right? And that's the thing that will outlive me, man. It's not the stuff that I will accumulate, or it's not the interviews that will last forever, but it's the people that you touch. It's the, it's the moments where you try to make it right for somebody else. If you could do that, that'll outlive you.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  How did you flip the switch? At what point did you move from wallowing in, you know, fear and shame and all of that to understanding and real, like taking ownership of this as like a, a, a new, like the, perhaps like the birth of a new life?

• 40:51Speaker 01

  I'll tell you where.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  I'm in Bethesda. It's about a week and a half, maybe two weeks into my stay at Bethesda. And I'm not sure if you remember, but there's an Olympics every four years. But when they do the Olympics, it's usually in August, it's right before September. And I am watching the 2012 Olympics. And for that week and a half, two weeks, I'm watching the first double amputee prosthetic Blade Runner. And he's competing against regular dudes. And I'm like, oh.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Was that Oscar?

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Oscar was out there. And I'm like, oh, man. What a time to be in the ER. The timing of that was just perfect for me. I was able to witness someone that had been in a situation similar to mine do what everybody said he should not be doing. He's running against able-bodied Olympians and he's winning. That was sort of like the light that I needed at that moment. A day later, I try and cut on the TV. And in Bethesda, it's one of the best hospitals you could ever go to if you're in the military.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  But the Wi-Fi went out. And when the Wi-Fi goes out, the cable's out. And I'm hitting the little button right there on the bed and I'm trying to turn it on. And no Wi-Fi, no cable. I tried to grab my iPad. No Wi-Fi. I just got games downloaded on here. And I'm like, ah, nothing. And I'm not sure if this was maybe the first time where I started practicing stillness. But in this moment, I am very still and there's nothing to try and grab my attention. I have to be totally focused. It's totally silent in there. It's dark and the nurse had just left.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  So she won't be back for about a couple of hours. And it's just me in silence. And I desperately am looking for something to distract me. The last thing I want to do is deal with this, right? At the time. So there's a stack of care packages right off to the side of the bed. And these are from people all over the United States that pack care packages for the troops. Man, I must've had a pile of them this high. And I go over, rich, right on top, there's a box and it's got a little weight to it. I go open it up. It's got like bubble wrap and packing peanuts in there.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  And sure enough, there is a pack of paper and a pack of pencils. The old school kind with the number two, the little paint, the eraser. Perfect. And I'm looking through this box and it's got candy. It's got magazines. It's got combs. It's got, I don't know if you remember Chia Pets. It's got Chia Pets in there. All types of stuff, just stuff for you to kind of get your mood up. I look through the box and I see the pencils and I see the paper. There's just no pencil sharpener in there. And this sends me over the edge. I'm already frustrated. The cable's out and I'm already frustrated.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  The nurses, and I can come back for another couple of hours. I can't watch Oscar. He's supposed to break some other record. And now I am without a pencil sharpener. And I just yell at God. I get angry at God. And I say, how could you let this happen to me? And when is it going to get better? Why me? And when is it going to get better? No answers. You would think that God would speak with words that we can understand, but this was him speaking in silence.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Until I hear these words, maybe about five minutes later, it's like, you are the pencil. Now, keep in mind, I don't have this box right in front of me anymore. I just laid it to the side and I'm yelling up at the ceiling. And the answer is, you are the pencil. I am the pencil? You. Me? Are you sure? Yes. It was just like this. And over the last, I don't know what, 14 years, not only do I understand that, hey, man, I'm the pencil. Yeah, I am. But you are too, dog.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  What does that mean? You are the pencil?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  I said the same thing. I said, what is? Bro, it's almost like we switched places. What does that mean? I'm the pencil. But this is what it means, man. Let me tell you, man. Those pencils.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  You got lead in your head.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I got lead in my hair. That's exactly what I felt like. It's like, is that what it means? No, man. Those pencils, it was like a pack of 10 of them. And because I didn't have the sharpener, I wish, I looked on DoorDash and Uber Eats all over Manhattan for somebody would deliver me a pack of pencils for this interview. But it's supposed to be like this, I guess. But in this pack of pencils that was on this, in this care package, I said, man, I'm the pencil. But without the pencil sharpener, this pencil, as good as it is, it never truly achieves its purpose. Without the pencil sharpener? Yes, great.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  The pencil will always be a pencil. The pencil will always have meaning, but it will never achieve purpose unless it meets the sharpener. You, you, you would have never been the rich that you are today had you never gone through your sharpener experience. I am the same way. This was my sharpening experience. And for one slight moment, it took the pain away from what happened and it gave this pain purpose. Oh, wait a minute. You mean to tell me that just as that pencil needs that sharpener, I need the sharpening

• 47:31Speaker 01

  of life? Oh, man, wait a minute. So, so when tough things happen, it has a purpose. If that sharpener can sharpen that pencil, that pencil can achieve its life purpose. And here's the crazy thing about the pencil. Without that sharpener, that lead will always be inside. It will never be exposed. And without the sharpener of life, the thing that's inside you, it will never make it to the light, man. It'll always be buried under the parts of you. It'll always be buried under the ego or the money or the fame or the fortune or whatever. It'll always be in track.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  It'll always be in there. But the moment you go into the sharpener, the best parts of you, they don't stay on the inside anymore. They come on the outside. How many people you know that are truly great today? They went through a sharpening experience and the best parts of them, the world could see now. Man, you don't get no Michael Jordan without him being cut from the varsity. You don't get the Magic Johnson we see today without the HIV diagnosis. You don't, man. You don't. You don't get Batman without his parents getting killed. You don't even get to know Alfred until his parents are killed, man.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  You don't get a Superman without Krypton blowing up. And you don't get a Cedric King without him stepping on a bomb in Afghanistan.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Rivian. When I got behind the wheel of the R2 with RJ, the founder, the thing that stuck with me wasn't the exterior. It was realizing that there was a place for everything. All the stuff that usually ends up loose on the floor of a car had a spot specifically designed for it. There's hidden storage, a front trunk, rear seats that fold flat, and a drop glass on the liftgate so you can toss in groceries without opening the whole thing. These are small decisions, but they add up to far more room than the outside suggests. Inside, it's built to be lived in. The panoramic glass roof floods the cabin with light and the backseat has real legroom. The whole pallet is inspired by nature, so it feels considered rather than default.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  It's the kind of design you notice more the longer you live with it. See for yourself to book a demo drive, head to rivian.com/demo-drive. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. The, not a, the wearable health and fitness coach that gives you personalized and very helpful insights into your sleep, recovery, strain, and how your daily choices are actually landing in your body. We know how some choices land. If we stay up too late, if we're overly stressed, we know it will degrade how we feel the next day. But we also make many other choices where blindly unaware impact our bodies negatively.

• 50:41Speaker 00

  And for me, it was actually an epiphany to see in a graph how eating late before bed raises my stress levels and resting heart rate while I sleep, which negatively impacts sleep quality and HRV in quite surprising ways. For me, this is huge and hugely empowering because it takes the argument out of my head and puts the data in front of my eyes. How I'm actually recovering, what the accumulated strain has cost me, whether my body is absorbing the work or just tolerating it. Also, it's not only for people interested in physical training. Anybody juggling work, travel, family, stress, trying not to feel wrecked by Thursday, all of you, all of us, we get the same thing. Your body's been telling you something.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  And here is your opportunity to hear it a little bit better with Whoop. Go to join.whoop.com/roll for one month free of Whoop. We talked about it a little bit out on the course. This thing that my wife always reminds me of, which is that everything that happens to us is neutral until you apply perspective. Meaning, things happen. We make mistakes. We succeed at things. We fall short. And then the world has its say and you know, things occur. You, what happened to you, happened to you. Everybody has their version of that. It's not going to be as extreme as what you have endured.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  But we're so quick to label these things. As bad or good, terrible, awesome. Oh, that's amazing. Oh, that's the worst thing. The worst outcome I could have imagined, blah, blah, blah. And we're doing it in the moment. And we don't have really any evidence to support a positive or negative perspective on either of these things. And ultimately, it's a choice. And if you believe, as I do, that we're here to grow, evolve and serve, everything that happens is serving that because everything is an opportunity to grow if you can perceive it as such. And this story, or this analogy or metaphor about being the pencil,

• 52:51Speaker 00

  leads to the second observation, which is that a pencil is ultimately a tool for somebody to use. And if you're a pencil, you are a utility for somebody else's problem solving or creative expression.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  And if you see yourself as that, as I know you do, like you being out on the marathon course, you're basically like transmitting this message of like, I am a tool for the inspiration of others. Like people can project upon you like their own fears and see what you're doing and extract inspiration from that. And in a sense, using you in the most positive kind of interpretation of the word use, because use can be a negative thing, but like using you for their own personal betterment.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  That's right. Yesterday, before we started, or maybe in the first few miles, we got to Brooklyn. And I was like, yo, I just want to be a billboard for what's possible in someone else's life. Like, I told you, God gave me a second chance, man. It ain't about me no more. And to your point, yes, it's how you look at what happened to you. It's not about what happened to you. It's how you see it. I did not see this in the beginning. So I don't want anybody to think they gotta hurry up and get to this place. A reflection right now. Nah, it took me a while, man.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  But I think this moment of reflection where the pencil happened, this pencil analogy, that helped me along the road a little bit, but it still took a lot of time for me to see that this could be used for good.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  I mean, like every superhero that we always talk about, there is power in every pain. And I think that it's very, it's very irresponsible of us to want power without problems. This was a super problem, especially at the beginning. But from this, I extract a superpower. I know that they're fictitious superheroes, but I think that the story behind them is so powerful. It's for us to look at what happens to us. Some unfortunate circumstances can be turned around in some very powerful tools

• 55:12Speaker 01

  that we could use not for ourself, but for 1.7 million people looking on the course yesterday. Yes, it's my pain, but maybe I could show you that, hey, maybe God didn't give up on you either. Or maybe, or maybe, yes, you just became a single parent, but maybe you can keep going too. Because we're doing it. We're living proof that you can keep going. You don't have to tap out. You can if you want to, but you don't have to. And if you find the strength to keep going, there are tangible benefits that you will get in life. But more importantly, there's people that you're going to bless that will, your gift will outlive you.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  The reflex, reflexive kind of defense against that, that I can kind of hear in my head from the average person is, well, like, what do I have to give? You know, like, yeah, I have my pain, but like, I didn't lose my legs and like, you know, my story isn't all that extreme. So, you know, it doesn't really mean that much in terms of how it might impact other people. But I think, you know, everybody has their pain and your pain is your pain. And you're this extreme example of it, but it's really just, again, like a metaphor for like, everybody, nobody gets out of life alive, you know? We all have our, we're all on our hero's journey and we all have our lowest moments.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  And that, that, that, that thing that happens in the second, at the bottom of the second act where all hope is lost, you know? You know, we're all living that out on some level, like that archetype, right? And to be able to be you as a mirror for everyone else to kind of reflect on their own, like where they are in their own hero's journey. And to say, if I'm not there yet, or if I'm in that really dark place, like there is hope on the other side. There is possibility. There is a way to like, use it as alchemy to, to transform it, to transmute it into something positive.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Do not get it.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  And everybody's story is worthy of telling. We're all, we've all, we've all lived a unique set of experiences and that has value.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  One of my favorite books that I ran across, especially maybe two, two books. Man's Search for Meaning. I was given this book a week before this happened. The chaplain.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  The week before stepping on the IED?

• 57:42Speaker 01

  This, the chaplain was trying to make it out to our outpost. And because there's so many, there's so many ambushes to vehicle, vehicle convoys, the chaplain couldn't make it out to our outpost. But the week before this happened, the chaplain comes out. He has a little service in our little tent where we eat at, and he has a stack of books. And he leaves some books, some bibles and stuff. And Man's Search for Meaning was the last book there was left. Most of the guys just took the bibles, right? So I was like, yo, I've heard about Viktor Frankl, but I didn't have a book. So the week prior to this happening, I get to the place,

• 58:27Speaker 01

  I think the last chapter I got to was the part where they were finding the value of that little small, like you're lucky if you find a pea in this bottom of this watery soup. And it just baffled me. I was like, wow, they were at a point so low that happiness was finding a small piece of rice or a pea in the bottom of a questionably watery soup. A cold watery soup. I was like, wow. That means that your, your perception of what happy or blessed or thankful can be shifted so much. Probably the next day, I got injured.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  But that, that, that was one of the, that was one of the guides to this happening. A year before this happened, I finished the book called The Alchemist. And to your point with the alchemy, this is you taking something that's so abstract and turning it into something beautiful. Something that's not initially beautiful, something that is anything but beautiful, but you could turn it into your own goal. You could turn it, and I don't mean goal in the set, in the sense of something that I aspire to go get, but you could turn it into something very rare. You could turn it into something very rare, something very beautiful by your attitude, by the way that you see it. Now, A, for the person that is listening to this and said, man, I'm not, I don't have a 1% injury.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  I'm not one of the, the people that was given life-changing money, or I'm not charismatic. And what do I have to give to the world? If you feel like that right now, you are at the right place, the right podcast. Here it is right here. You must start with living a life of service. Yesterday, I know we keep saying yesterday, but yesterday, right before we started the marathon, I don't even know, but I was super nervous, man. And every time I get super nervous because I know I'm getting ready to go in and fight this humongous bully for the next six hours, I tried and it worked. It worked. What I did was start going around hugging other people and encouraging other people.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  And soon the fear that I did have that I was gonna have to go and face this, this six hour task, started becoming, hey, let me give encouragement to the people that are getting ready to tackle this too. And they were just as afraid as I am. They were just as nervous as I am. But what I did was I took this nervous energy and I put it to use through giving away the very thing that I needed. The very encouragement that I needed to say, okay, we could do this. I was giving it away. And by me giving away hugs and smiles and reassurance to other people, in, in a certain way, that kind of quelled the storm for me. If you, if you practice it enough, it will work in your darkest moments.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Anytime I gotta go on stage and, and give a talk, I spend time hugging and giving away the, the, the, the great energy because it's, it's a reflection. It bounces back to you.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  Even when you do it selfishly, you're, you receive exponentially. You know what I mean? It almost doesn't matter your motivations. And I think there's a lot of, when you say service. I think people conflate that with like, you gotta go work a soup kitchen or something like that. It's a mentality shift in how you're just interacting with other people in the world.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  Hey, man, it takes nothing to say, hey, look, I'm at Starbucks right now. I'm at the coffee, wherever. I'm gonna grab two cups, because I know somebody that I work with would probably want a coffee right now. It doesn't matter if they want the cup or not. It's just you are being of service to someone else. Hey, look, when I go to the airport today, maybe the guy needs this extra Zelle that I give him. Hey, look, man, hey, here's 20 bucks. So here's, you know, 50 bucks, or whatever it is. I want to make sure that the moments where I feel like that I can't, I be of service. I know it sounds cliches and maybe like corny, but it really works

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  because you stop looking at yourself differently. When you live a life to give, you stop seeing yourself the same. You start seeing yourself as a person that is not confined to the way that you used to be. Now you start seeing yourself as, wait, I have just evolved into a different dimension. Now I am not trapped by what I thought was just limiting forces, just me being the old way that I was. Now, the choices that I make have superseded the need that I thought I had to be in. I had to be in this little box. I had to be the old Cedric. Nope. Now I can give. And it doesn't matter what the circumstances are. I am a giver now.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Not just in word, but also indeed. That whole makes sense, man. I'm hoping saying it right.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  Here's how it's gonna make sense. Let's, let's go back to the Bronx. I think it was on the bridge to Harlem. You're starting to, you're starting to fade a little bit. And this is, this is when, this is when Joe was working on the website.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was.

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  We're up ahead.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Knee deep in cloud.

• 1:03:45Speaker 00

  And we turn around, we're like, where's Cedric? And you were way back. And I witnessed something I'll never forget, because I knew you were hurting. You pulled over to the side and there was a woman sitting on the curb. And instead of, you know, kind of obsessing on your own challenge in the moment, you stopped and you leaned down and you started talking to her and you started asking her how she was doing and encouraging her that she could get back up and complete this thing. And you, you helped her up and got her back on her feet and moving again. And I was like, that is unbelievable.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  During these moments, I know that it's not me anymore, because I'm out of gas, man. I got nothing left in the tank. So when I am out of gas and I got nothing left in the tank, I know that there's moments of self-reflection, but I also, I also know that I am in a minefield, so to speak, of people that are going through the same thing that I am going through. It's just you gotta look around to your left, your right, your front, your back. And there's gonna be somebody that's there that's struggling just like you. Sure enough, my Bluetooth was acting up. So I couldn't, I couldn't be distracted in this moment. I was like, oh, man, where's that song?

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  What were you listening to? Were you listening to music?

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Man, I had gospel going on for the first 13 miles at Mahalia Jackson. All right, but I had some Kurt Franklin.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Everybody there. But at mile 13, we crossed the Pulaski Bridge, and my playlist starts to run, it starts to loop again. So I was like, all right, let me find something else. I cut on a different YouTube playlist. And, and I don't know what goes on, but sometimes we get around a lot of people, my Bluetooth starts acting up. So right as we're coming up that hill, Bluetooth's out. I'm like, where in the world is going on? Start checking all the connections. And to my left, I see somebody that's sitting down. And it looked like she was in tears. And Joe and I have seen this 100 times, man, where there have been people out there that are in tears, because marathons tend to make you emotional when you got nothing

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  left. And I was like, hey, listen, you got this. It ain't over. This is exactly where you're supposed to be at. This is the, this is the time. This is your moment right now. Like, you're not gonna brag about any other time in this marathon. But you will brag about this moment. There's gonna come a day, maybe a week from now, maybe a year from now, but you're gonna brag about the moment where you had nothing left and you got up and you kept going. That's the moment you're gonna remember. That's the moment that you're gonna remember when Grandma's got chemo in a couple of years, and you got up and kept fighting, you kept believing in yourself. And that's the moment that you're gonna take to someone

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  else to be able to encourage them. It ain't the moments where we got all, all the energy. It ain't the moments we got all the money. Those are not the moments that we treasure. We, if we're being honest, we treasure the moments where it was, it was dark, and it was two or three dudes with baseball bats. And, and, and you still had to put your dukes up and fight anyway. Those are the moments that you remember that you're gonna be so proud of yourself, man.

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  What did she say to you when you said that to her?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  She said nothing.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  She didn't say anything?

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  She said not one word. She got up. No, well, she did. She said, thank you. She got up. And this is what made me a little afraid. She got up, she started walking and then she started running. And I was like, uh oh, I may have sabotaged this lady. Maybe she's gonna do, maybe she's gonna hit the gas pedal too hard. I don't know. But I never saw her again. And I don't know what it was. I don't know what it was. But I hope that if she were listening to this right now, I would thank her for allowing me to be part of that story that she tells herself.

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  In addition to looking at what happened to you as, as this gift, you also have this perspective that, that you were spared. You, you told me out on the course, I'm not sure I totally understand, that when it occurred, there were like two grenades that the pins were still in, meaning, I guess, that it could have been a lot worse. It could have taken your life.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

  Had it gone a different way.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  A hand grenade, all right, shout out to Joe. A hand grenade is no bigger than this soda can right here. Maybe just a little taller, but it's no bigger than this.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  That's not soda. That's a, that's a fine Go Brewing.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  This is a fine Go Brewing.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  Elixir of life.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  Non-alcoholic beer. Shout out to Go Brewing. But a grenade is no bigger than this soda can right here, this, this beer can. I had two of them hooked to me. A grenade is very simple. It's an explosive, it's a spoon, and it's a pin. This spoon will keep this grenade dormant for eternity. If this pin is in this grenade, you can remove the pin, and guess what? As long as you hold that spoon still, it will not explode until the end of the world. But the moment you let that spoon go, you got about five seconds.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  And it's gonna have a 35 meter kill radius. I had two of them on me. Now, the force that blew both of these legs off was strong enough to separate appendages, was strong enough to, to, to rip the skin off of my, my right arm, was strong enough to take the rifle barrel and have it have a slight bend in it. Now, I, I, I'm not, anybody that's listening to this, anybody's ever been to Afghanistan, Iraq, and you do foot patrols, everybody has grenades. Every squad leader, every platoon sergeant, every team sergeant, you got, everybody's got frag grenades or flashbangs. I just happened to have two of them on me that day. And it's

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  not even, that's, that's very normal. It's very normal. The blast goes off. Those two pins stayed put. If it's strong enough to take my legs off, surely the blast is strong enough to, to rip those pins out. Surely it's strong enough to let those spoons fly, but it didn't. And I know I got a second chance, Rich. This ain't, this ain't me banging my chest and say, ah, look at me, how tough. Nah, man, I got a second chance. I was given, by the grace of God, a second chance. And I hope that someone's listening to this. Man,

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  the second chance that you got, it's not for you. It's for you to give the good that's inside you. Use it wisely. Don't use it for more ego. Use it wisely. I remember this one time, Rich. This is the first second chance that I got. I say the second chance. I'm a paratrooper. I jump out of airplanes for a living. The sergeant comes out and says, everybody with more than 12 jumps, I want you here. Everybody with more than 12 jumps, I want you in a group over here. Early one morning, early one morning, Fort Bragg, North

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Carolina. I was so excited that I had more than 12 jumps. I'm so glad that I am not with the rookies anymore. I gladly go over there. I don't even ask questions why this group. I didn't care. I just wanted to be with the senior guys. Go over here. Everything's great. Little did I know, two hours later, I am sitting on the edge of a helicopter, just like this, just like this, sitting on the edge of a helicopter. The ground is way down there. Now, obviously, I got legs, so it looks a little bit different than how it does right now. But I'm sitting on the edge of a helicopter, me and my two buddies right here. It doesn't even occur to me why I am in this other formation. Didn't ask, didn't

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  care.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  A jump master says thirty seconds. One, well, says one minute, thirty seconds. Stand by and taps me on my back of my shoulder. I jump off. It's a helicopter jump. But since the helicopter jumps are slightly different and dynamic, it's a longer, it's a longer count. It's a longer free fall.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand. Seems like an eternity. I'm falling. Five thousand, six thousand. I feel the parachute start to open it up and I am elated. Oh, my goodness. My buddy that was just right here, he's way over there, about a hundred yards. And there's a big problem at this point. I look up for the first time. I look up and there's not one, but two, three, four, five holes in the parachute, big as your chest.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  And now I got decision to make. The way that the army does parachuting, you get two chances at it. You get a main parachute, which mine now has five holes in it. And you get a secondary parachute right here. Now, if your second parachute doesn't work, hey, it's a bad day at the job for you. But just so happens that my second parachute is right here, ready to be deployed. I panic and I reach for it, Rich, and I start to pull it. And my buddy that's about a hundred yards over, he says, no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't pull the parachute. What do you mean? Don't pull the parachute. Look at the holes up in the parachute. I'm pulling. Don't, no, no, don't touch it. Don't touch it. Don't touch it. The holes are supposed to be there.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  What do you mean? The holes are supposed to be there. They're supposed, don't touch it. They're supposed to be there. What do you mean?

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  We're at a thousand feet above ground level and we're arguing about me pulling my reserve parachute. He said, no, the holes are built into the parachute. They actually provide forward thrust and control over the canopy. That is basically your new steering wheel. This is a better parachute. This is why you were in that different group. And just like the holes are built into that parachute, the holes are built into our life, dog. It's not the fact that the legs got blown off.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's built into there and it is built in in such a way that now you have more control over your canopy. This will give you, if you can see it that way, back to the point where your wife just said. If you can look at it for good, if you can use it for good, now you can control your descent a little bit better. It's not a tragedy. Stop panicking. Don't pull, don't pull the, the, the, the, let me get out of here strategy. No, just be calm for a second. The closer you get to the ground, you're going to be glad that you don't have to fall into that lake right there. Or you're going to be glad you don't have to crash into those trees or run into that building right there.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  You're going to be glad that you can slow the parachute down. You're going to be glad that you can land softly and not crash. Why? Because of those holes up in that parachute. They're built in. It's supposed to be there.

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  I love that. That's so fantastic. At the same time, I can't help but think that there was a communication breakdown in the chain of command. Why was it not?

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  It was told clearly.

• 1:15:51Speaker 00

  That there's supposed to be these holes because you almost made a fatal decision.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Remember, remember in the beginning of the story, I didn't care why I was over here. This, this group of people were almost the ones that did not have to have. The, the, the group over here were novices. So they had parachutes that didn't have steering components. They had parachutes that didn't have holes in them. So they were at the mercy of whatever the wind gave them. These parachutists over here, they were a little bit more seasoned. They'd already done these jumps. So these guys are almost being given a responsibility to use these higher end parachutes. These more advanced parachutes. Why? Because they're more advanced parachutists.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  So I should have paid attention somewhere in those two, three hours of, man, you're in pre-jump. You're in actions in the aircraft. You are doing these, these pre-parachute drills to be able to understand, hey, it's going to be a little bit different experience. Man, I was so happy to be over here with the big dogs.

• 1:17:03Speaker 00

  You weren't paying attention.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  I didn't care, but obviously Robinson, about a hundred yards away, he did.

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  And thank God for those moments in my life where these things have happened to kind of prepare me for moments like this to help me understand that these, these holes in life are built in to my, to my story. They're built onto the path. Dorothy is supposed to run into the Poison Poppies. She's supposed to run into the Wicked Witch of the West. She's supposed to run into people along her pathway that help her get back home. And no different than on the Wizard of Oz is no different than us in life. This is built into our pathway. Now you can curse it or you can embrace it.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  You can call it a curse or you can call it, this is my greatest gift, man.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  What are you calling it? What are you calling it? Are you calling the divorce? Are you calling it the worst thing ever? Are you calling it the, the worst day of my life? Or can you get to a place where you're thankful for it? I think you can get, I think you can become thankful for it.

• 1:18:22Speaker 00

  What kind of kid were you?

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  I, I, this is the part where I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but growing up, I got picked on. I got picked on. At least. I don't, I have, I don't have older brothers. Do you have older brothers?

• 1:18:41Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  I didn't either. But in my neighborhood, I wouldn't have grown up anywhere else, but there's a couple dudes that was always older.

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  That would like roughhouse me up. And it was still confidence that I, that I have now. It's still the confidence that I have now I should have had back then.

• 1:19:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Because I didn't know how to stand up.

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  It's easy to envision you like this kid who's just owning, you know, owning his peers, like with all this confidence and, and bluster.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  No, no. Okay. All right. The kids that I hang out, that I hung out with were just a little bit younger than me.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  All my buddies were just a little bit, I had two real, real good friends that were the same age as me. Especially, we're talking about ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th grade. We're talking about maybe from seventh grade to 12th grade. All my really, really good friends were a little bit younger than me. So I felt like that this is where the char, this charisma comes from. Because I'm a little bit older and, and when you're young, you kind of look up to, to older, older kids. So all my peers in the neighborhood were older, but they were always older guys than me. And those dudes, well, some of those dudes, some of those dudes would like, I would, I would get picked on a little bit. Or I'd get roughshelled a little bit.

• 1:20:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  And, and honestly, you know what?

• 1:20:02Speaker 00

  Like, like bullied or are you, are you down or less than that?

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  I would say, all right, now we're talking about bullying in the nineties and the eighties is way different than bullying today. Not to, not to take anything away from the bullying that you have on social, but this is physical. Like, hey, a, a, a play fight, you know, kids wrestle back in the eighties and nineties. You turn on WWF, WWE, we're practicing wrestling. But sometimes when you're growing up as guys, it gets physical. And I would get owned a lot, man. I would get owned a lot and it would be like on the back of the bus.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  Somewhere between the middle of where the, the, the second wheel well is to the back of the bus. It's some characters back there. It's almost like the back alley crew. And you don't want to go all the way back to the back of the bus. Because those dudes back there are a little bit older, a lot stronger. And if you happen to sit back there, you're going to catch it with some bored teenagers that are just looking for weakness.

• 1:20:58Speaker 00

  What was going on at home?

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Uh, my, my mom is a single mom. My dad struggled with alcohol dependence. He struggled with some really, really tough challenges with himself. And he was always my dad. I always loved him, but I just never got a chance to spend a lot of time with him. I didn't grow up seeing a, a husband and a wife.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  Like be there for each other and grow together and disagree. So it, it affected the relationships that I have even up to now. Having a father in your life, man, is so powerful. You could, you could have the one guy that's proud of you and, and help you go out and conquer the world, man. Or, or you could, you could be bullied and not know how to stand up for yourself. A dad will make you go out there and fight that dude. Whereas if you don't have a dad there, he's not going to hold you to the, he's not going to hold you and say, hey, you need to go and stand up for him.

• 1:21:55Speaker 00

  So what's the relationship between that dynamic at home and with your peer group? And the decision to enlist in the army? Like you were, how old were you? Really young, right?

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  I chose to go into the army. I was a little bit young and the average guy, seventeen, when I went into the army. And I could not, I could not do what some of the other kids in the neighborhood were doing. The older guys that were my age, those dudes were now starting to wear flashy clothes. And they were, you know, dating really pretty girls and those dudes had fast money. And they were, some of them, some of them, not all of them, some of them had made some decisions where I knew that my mom and my grandparents, they would kill me. It wouldn't have, it wouldn't be the streets that took me out. It would be them. So I had really, really strong family members that would not allow me to take the path of least resistance.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  I go into the military and now that same validation that I wanted from a male figure. Now I'm seeing that from dude with the guys that are in my face every day, the sergeants. They demanded respect. I didn't live up to the respect that they demanded in the beginning. I didn't live up to their expectations in the beginning. I was a knucklehead when I first came in the military. I didn't know what it was to have a, a, a male figure yell at you and then hold you accountable.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  Without you feeling like it's personal. I would always think that, well, if somebody's yelling at me, it must mean that it's a personal thing. Not knowing that you can be, you can be held accountable without catching feelings about it, without being emotional about it. He just wants to see you be better. But the ironic thing that I saw was the guys that had dads in their life. Man, they were, they were, them dudes was all good. We were both in the same trouble, but those, they took it, they took it easier. They took it better. They didn't take it personal. And I wish that I had that. It took me a while to get to that place, man.

• 1:24:00Speaker 00

  Is dad in the past tense or is dad still around? And do you have a relationship with him?

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  That's a great question. He's, he's passed away.

• 1:24:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  And I think.

• 1:24:09Speaker 00

  From alcoholism?

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, it caught up to him. It caught up to him. A life of probably trying to extinguish the pain. And to be honest with you, I ran into a little bit of it too. It wasn't with alcohol, but when I got injured, it was.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Please, please, please, please do not miss this. But for me, about, I was one of the fortunate ones not to get hooked on some of the prescriptions that I was given. Um, the doctors were doing their job. They just were trying to keep me out of pain. You get your legs blown off and you're having surgeries all the time. You get some really good, you get some really good drugs.

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  I, I hate, I don't want to say it so crass, but I was getting, I was getting really good, good medication to be able to manage pain with. The problem with it is I started to abuse it a little bit. It's not because I wanted to be abusing it. It's not because I wanted to be irresponsible, but pain could be something that's so debilitating sometimes. Just a little bit of relief is great.

• 1:25:26Speaker 00

  And these things are highly addictive.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  Don't.

• 1:25:29Speaker 00

  I mean, like, it's not a moral weakness, dude. I had a guy on the show, uh, recently who was a naval aviator and he was flying, uh, like, like F-18, uh, F-18s.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:46Speaker 00

  And was out on maneuvers and just, it's a long story, but he ended up losing control of the plane and was headed towards the ocean. Um, at 700 miles an hour, just short of the, the, the.

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  Mach.

• 1:26:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was like, he was Mach point nine five, just short of the speed of sound. And he had an, you know, a microsecond to, to eject.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:12Speaker 00

  Before his plane just vaporized on the ocean surface. And so he has the distinction of like having, being the, the fastest ejection survivor in like naval aviating history, but it destroyed his body. It's a long story, but like, you know, and he has a whole story of being in the VA system and, you know, kind of how that typically goes and just being on a whole battery of medications. And like, you know, it's very difficult to kind of heal your way out of that. And a lot of people get stuck and it's not surprising that a very, you know, a large percentage of people end up addicted to these substances.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  The VA gets a bad rap. Uh, I was introduced to the VA in DC on Urban Street. Um, and, and in our country, we got a great system, but it takes two, it takes two entities. The patient has to be adamant about going to make sure that they get the care, but the VA also has to do a better job. And you gotta do a better job at meeting the veteran where, where they are. And they try, they try. So I'm not, I get great care, but look at me though, man. I'm going to always get to the front of the line, most times. Or I'm going to get a, a, the first phone call because of my catastrophic injuries. But I, I hope we can get to a place where we can help vets out, not just medically, but you know,

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  home, homeless vets. Um, I don't know how in the world you can go and fight for our country. And then when you come back home, you get left holding the bag. We gotta do a better job of that.

• 1:27:45Speaker 00

  How did you snap out of the opioid addiction situation?

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  I'll be honest, I didn't, I didn't. It, it was not me. It was not me. Uh, let me say this. Have you ever been in a situation where one, for me, it was one oxy. I, I, they call it oxys or something like that. Oxytocin or oxycotton.

• 1:28:09Speaker 00

  Oxycodone, oxycotton.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  They're like so tiny. They're like the size of an Altoid mini, but I would take one and it would feel like, oh, I'm back. It felt terrific until it, until it didn't. And then what used to take one oxy, now it takes two. And two, I almost felt a little bit better. I was like, okay. And it lasted for longer. So now I could be, I could be rid of pain for hours now. Yeah, I'm in a wheelchair and yes, these hands are all in a cast and it burns all on me. Yep. But you know what? I'm almost bulletproof now.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  I feel like, wow, basically almost like without the injury. Until two is not doing it for me anymore. And this took months, it took months, but I got up to maybe like a five, five a day habit. And, and I know that there are people that's five, that's all you take, but five was a lot for me. But I started to notice that a part of me was dying. The pain was dying, but a part of me was dying too though, man. And I noticed it because every night we would watch something for the kids. My kids were really young at the time and SpongeBob was like a big deal to them. And I would, I would normally crack up watching SpongeBob, but it, but at this juncture, I was so out of it. I would just be dazed.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  I'd just be out of it. And they'd be cracking up laughing and they expect, you know, when kids laugh and they see you, they're expecting you to laugh with them, but I wasn't, I was so out of it.

• 1:29:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  And I remember, uh, just knowing that, you know, there's a part of me that's supposed to be laughing right now. That, that is so far gone that I don't even find humor in this moment. I don't, I don't find enjoyment with this. I want to be, I want to be in this catatonic state longer. So I don't have to face the pain that is going to come when this wears off. So let me stay here a little bit longer. And I became addicted not to necessarily the oxys, but I became addicted to not being in pain. Does that make sense? To not, to not wanting to be in agony, I guess.

• 1:30:34Speaker 00

  Sure. I mean, the, the, the substance is just a vehicle for finding an exit door from whatever pain you're suffering. I mean, that is the nature of addiction.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  I didn't know that at the time. I'd never been in, I'd never been to hospital, maybe once. Ibuprofen was like the strongest thing that I ever had taken. So oxys was like, whoa.

• 1:31:00Speaker 00

  You weren't like getting drunk in high school and stuff like that?

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  I like, I don't drink now. I have had a moment where just being introduced to alcohol, I've had one real hard drunk moment. And that was like, nope, I'm not doing that anymore. In the barracks years ago, gin was like a big deal. And if you're old enough to buy it, you share it with your younger buddies. Bro, that gin, that gin had me sinning.

• 1:31:27Speaker 00

  So it wasn't until you were in the military?

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  And when I came in the military, I had, I had my first like introduction to alcohol with, with real army dudes.

• 1:31:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  That I was like, oh, oh, this makes you throw up. I don't want to do that. Oh, this right here makes your breath smell bad. And, and hey, just when you think you, you're saying something real smooth to the ladies, it's not as cool as you thought it was. And I just, I, alcohol never really took.

• 1:31:55Speaker 00

  Well, also your dad.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  I didn't, I didn't even, I did not even put two and two together, even think about that at the time. I just wanted to fit in with the guys in the, in the military. But it just never, it never took, it never took. I was always doing something like playing hoops or something like that, or, or being with the girlfriend that I had at the time. So it was always like, uh, uh, alcohol wasn't that thing. It wasn't until I got injured until where I was like, oh, this is what addiction is. It's not me being irresponsible. It's just me not wanting to be in agony. And you could tell yourself, hey, that's noble. Who wants to be in pain all day? This is understandable. Anybody would understand.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  I don't want to be in agony all day, but my prescriptions are running low five times faster than they would be. And rightfully so, I'm in true agony. My legs have been blown off and every day I'm in debilitating pain. I don't want to do this anymore. And when you're faced with being in pain all day, not wanting to be here anymore. Can I say that?

• 1:33:02Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Or oxys, let me take the oxys.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  I don't want to end it all, but I don't want to be in pain. So this is like the lesser of three evils or maybe?

• 1:33:16Speaker 00

  But now you're checked out. And so how do you, uh, you know, come to the realization that you got to end it? And how did you, how did you do that?

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  Kids, man, we just had Christmas in Bethesda. They were going to Bethesda Elementary.

• 1:33:31Speaker 00

  I know what you're talking about that. I grew up in Bethesda.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 1:33:34Speaker 00

  So we've got the Bethesda thing. I used to deliver pizzas to, you know, like the, they were, there's like, there's these dorm rooms where like these military enlisted guys live that I think are working at Walter Reed or whatever. I was there all the time. Terrible tippers, by the way. These guys did not tip.

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  Maybe a little bit better now though.

• 1:33:53Speaker 00

  Hopefully. Anyway, and I went to Bethesda Elementary. So I went to in your, your.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  My daughters went there.

• 1:33:58Speaker 00

  Your daughters went there. Yeah.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  But here's the problem I have with Bethesda Elementary. DC has notorious snow every year. And this particular year they call snow baguette. It's two or three blizzards and they, Montgomery County gave them snow days for what felt like a whole month.

• 1:34:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, the thing about DC is it does get those big snow days, but they, you only get them like once or twice a year and it's not enough. It's insufficient to justify the budget to have all the like snow removal equipment to keep the roads. So the thing, when you're a kid, it's awesome because every time it snows, the schools are closed, no matter what. Like it could be like one inch on the ground and no school.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  That my kids to this day think the world of Bethesda, Maryland because of those snow days. They would sit in that building that you delivered pizzas to, and they would sit in this building and they would just be like on 10. And because they had just had Christmas, they had all these toys that people in our family were trying to just try to make sure that they have somewhat of a normal first Christmas after this crazy thing that happened in their family. So they had all these new Barbies, all these new Barbies. And what I didn't understand as a dad and as a guy, little girls take the outfits and they get rid of the outfits and they start making their own outfits.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  My daughters took some, some paper towel and had made a new dress for Barbie and was getting Barbie a wedding in their little room. You know, those, those apartments, they have like, sometimes they have like two, two, two room apartments. Well, one of their rooms was their room and I walk in or I roll in and they're having a wedding and they were like, dad, we need you to, we need you to be the boy doll. I was like, what, what you need me to do? They were like, we need you to read this. They're about to have a wedding and we need you to read this right here so we can hold them and have their wedding. But they needed me to get out of the wheelchair onto the floor. And they wanted me to just be there in the same capacity that I was before.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  I didn't realize that, but I was making excuses to why I couldn't get out of the floor. I couldn't get on the floor because I was so in my own.

• 1:36:21Speaker 00

  You're out of it.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  And I kept making legitimate, well, I thought was legitimate excuses. I, I can't play with you guys the way that I used to. No, no, no, no, no. I just wanted to go back and be by myself, you know? Cause I'm partly, I'm ashamed that I'm, that I'm this out of it. I'm this high.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  But part of, I wanted to send them the message that I'm different now. And my daughter, to your question, my daughter says this, dad, we just want you to play with us the way that you used to. We just want you to play with us the way that you used to play with us. And it just stopped everything. It was like pause.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  And it, and it, it resonates as I say it right now, just as much as it did back in December, 2013. Dad, we just want you to play with us.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  And I'm making excuses to why I can't play with them. I am now fighting for my own high. I'm now fighting to be apart from them. I'm fighting for my own

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  wanting to be smaller than what I know that I am. And in that moment, it might not have been my own strength, but I did see that there's something is wrong right now. I could, I'm better than this. It wasn't, I gotta go cold turkey. It wasn't that, it wasn't that at all, man. And, and to anyone who's struggling with something, I don't want to minimize your fight. I just did not have the strength to do it on my own. My daughter said something that stuck and that was the way out for me. That was the escape. That was the, that was my way out.

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  And unfortunately for me, man, I didn't, I didn't, I never went back.

• 1:38:36Speaker 00

  Did you cold turkey it or did you wean yourself off?

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  I, I know this is, and once again, that's why I hate telling this part of the story. It wasn't that I weaned it. I just didn't go back and fill the prescription. So may, so maybe I wasn't that far along. Maybe I, and I don't want to minimize anybody's fight, but for me, I had gotten to the point where I knew something's wrong, but I could not have stopped if she hadn't have said that. Or I probably would not have stopped if I didn't notice it. But every time I would go to the doc, they would ask me what kind of pain you on and scale of one to 10. I would always say like nine or 10. And I would always describe to them what it feels like and they would always prescribe. I would just be like, hey.

• 1:39:19Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  Bro, I could have made.

• 1:39:20Speaker 00

  They're going to continue to prescribe it and the, and your, you know, the, it would, it would escalate. Your using would escalate. And there would be, eventually you were just going to have to face some version of what you experienced. Like that was inevitable. I mean, I'm glad you got out of it, but then you had to weather through your pain without it, right? What was that like? And what is your pain like now? Like, do you have the phantom pain and?

• 1:39:47Speaker 01

  I do have phantom pains now, but I will say this, in those first few months of, of freedom, it wasn't, it wasn't like my life turned around, I feel a hundred percent. It wasn't like that. It wasn't like that. I had to go through being okay with being in pain. Because now I had a real why to why I didn't want to be high. I had a why, I didn't mean for that to rhyme, but I had a why for why I didn't want to be high. It was those little girls wanted their dad back, man. And maybe I loved them more than I love being out of it.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  Maybe I loved them a little bit more than me wanting to be out of it. And that gave me just enough room to escape and stay gone.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  It was just a window that I needed to, to, to be okay with being in a little bit of pain. And sooner or later, what I didn't understand was my body would soon be okay and normalize this feeling. So these phantom pains that I have now, they're normal now, but back then it wasn't normal. It felt like my feet were on fire or it felt like my hands were like, were like being crushed or it felt like my, my, my leg was being like set ablaze. Now my body has normalized that feeling. Every now and again, I do have extreme, extreme phantom pains and it feels like my, my toes are in a vice or some sort, but they come and they go.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  And it's been like that for 14 years, but I now, I now know that I'm not at a situation where I have to go and medicate it. I'm okay with it raging and screaming and being painful and knowing that that will pass sooner or later. And I'll go back to baseline. Yeah, it does suck. When it happens, I don't know if it's going to happen last night, last night, last night. Prime example, 2:30 in the morning, I told you, I told you, I, I woke up at 2:30, but I didn't tell you why. Phantom pain out of, out of nowhere. It feels like I got an itch, my, my back of my, my foot.

• 1:42:06Speaker 00

  That's such a trip.

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  I don't have a back of my foot.

• 1:42:08Speaker 00

  You can't satisfy that itch. Yeah.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  So what do you do? You have to be in discomfort and know that it will pass. And you cannot force it to pass sooner.

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  You gotta sit in the discomfort.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  And notice you don't have to medicate it, bro. It's almost like, hey, just because I'm tired, doesn't mean I have to quit. Just because I'm in pain, doesn't mean I have to medicate it. My body will figure it out. If I'm patient and I stay in the pocket, you see those quarterbacks that feel the heat and they want to hurry up and get out of the pocket. Cause they don't see the receiver yet and they just, let me get out of here. It's sort of like that. Nothing against quarterbacks that are mobile quarterbacks. Shout out to all the quarterbacks out there.

• 1:42:56Speaker 00

  All right, let me hit you with this. Did that flirtation with addiction change your relationship? Your like internal relationship with your father or the father that you never had? That's part one. And part two, seeing your daughters

• 1:43:17Speaker 00

  desire to just have their dad back the way he was before, not the legs, but the energy, the presence. Did that? Take you back to young Cedric and his desire to just want to have a dad who was present with him. Is there any connective tissue there that you've thought about?

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  Before I forget, question number one, to your point, yes, it totally, it totally gave me a new and better understanding of, oh, he's not staying away because he didn't want to be with me. He's staying away because he's ashamed. He doesn't want me to pick up something that he's gotten on him or something that he's fighting. He doesn't want me seeing him succumb to what could be taking him down. So instead of my son seeing that, guess what? I'll, I will separate myself. I won't call this much.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  And I understand that now. I never took it personal, but I always just wish I could have had somebody there guiding me through this uncertain manhood journey. I, I understand why he had to stay away now. Today, for my daughters, I always, from the day they were born, before I got injured, I always wanted to be, me and Joe talked about this, I always wanted to be the dad that I never got. I always wanted to be a little bit better. I, I want them to be able to have a dad

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  that comes to recitals or comes to plays or sporting events, swimming meets. I, I want to be there and it feels just as good being there as maybe if my dad had been there. Maybe it's selfish a little bit. Maybe I'm showing up to be able to relive something that I never had. And that's all right with me right now.

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  I hope what I, what I don't do is I hope I, I don't weaponize and say, I was always there for you. So I, I hope that I never, I'd never be that guy. I'm doing, because I love being there.

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  And, and that's all that really matters, you know?

• 1:45:40Speaker 00

  And the first part?

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  The first part is, yes. Hey, for that first question, yeah, I, I don't, I don't. I don't hold it against him because I understand that he's dealing with that. And, and for me, understanding it means, oh, this could have easily been you, Cedric.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  You didn't understand why he wasn't there, but now I do. And it, and it's not because he was weak.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  He just, he just never got a chance to get that door open long enough for him to stay gone. When you went through your struggles, the people that saw you when you were at your best before this happened,

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  I am sure that they have the very best stories of you, of you being at your very best or your most witty or your funniest or at your best moments. And those are the moments that they could share with the people that love you the most. When my dad was younger, he had friends all over the county. And the day that he passed, the day we had the funeral, man, everybody came up to me and went to me, your dad, boy, he gave you the shirt off his back. Your dad gave me money when I had to have a dime. Your dad was this, your dad was that. As a means to say, hey, look, I know he, he succumbed to this.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  Please don't get that guy mistaken with the guy that he really is. I would not want someone coming to tell my daughter's stories of me that were better than their stories of me. Does that make sense?

• 1:47:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:23Speaker 00

  July 2012, this is when it happens. You told me yesterday that you ran Boston, I think, 21 months later, the Boston Marathon.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:47:39Speaker 00

  21 months from everything that you just elaborated on to running the Boston Marathon. How did that, how is that possible? How did that happen?

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Once again, a lot of grace, a lot of things had to happen. If you can remember, April 2013, Boston Marathon happens and at the finish line, there are three separate huge bombs that are at the finish line. And on American soil, I am witnessing what just happened to me just a year prior, less than a year prior. And now I'm watching it happen. I'd just gotten my running legs. I had just gotten my running legs. So the walking legs that I walked in here on, I had walked on those for a while.

• 1:48:34Speaker 01

  And I had gotten to the point where the doc was going to give me the thumbs up so that I could start running. That's all I cared about. I wanted to get back to doing what I used to do. I was so laser focused on wanting to get back to the way things were. And I just got my running blades and I'm putting them on and I'm doing my little steps. And I'm trying to, I'm seeing how light they are and seeing them more agile. And at the back of the, of the amputee little OT facility, there's a TV and they had ESPN on there. And I'm doing a workout. And now I started to see one, two, three, five, seven, 10 people congregate

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  at the back of the room. This is a massive gym. It has a track in it. But now there's a crowd of people and the crowd is starting to get bigger in the back of the room. And I stayed, look, I stayed running. But by the time I come back to the next lap, I glanced at the screen and there's like breaking news, smoke, people running, carnage. And I, I put, I mean, I figure out what had happened. And it's so ironic that I say, and it's where you got to be careful.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  When you ask for something, I can remember wanting to help the victims. Or I didn't say victims, the heroes of that day. I can remember just saying a small prayer and saying, man, Lord, help me to be of service to people in Boston one of these days. I would love to be there on the scene to be able to help out. And you got to be careful. You got to be careful.

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  That was April 2013. One year after I said that small prayer was 21 months after I lose my legs. I am at the starting line of the Boston Marathon. And not just in a capacity to go and tell them my story, but in a capacity to just show my story on the biggest stage, dog. This was one year after they had just experienced what I had experienced, not even two years after me losing my legs. And one of the greatest moments wasn't just for me to run it.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  It was to be able to run it for a young man named Martin Richard. Martin was an eight-year-old that was on the start or the finish line of the bombing. The bomb, the bombs were placed on the right side of the finish line. As you're approaching Boylston, on the left side, on the right side, and then a little bit further down. And these bombs were placed in strategic places, right at the finish line, where the supporters and the cheerers would have been the thickest. Martin was an eight-year-old. He was standing right next to his little sister who was standing right next to his dad.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  The, the, if you look at the video, there is a backpack that gets set right at, at, at his, at his legs. Right there, if somebody walks off. Moments later, the bomb vaporizes the young, well, it didn't vaporize him, but it, it, it kills him. It kills him. His little sister becomes an amputee. His dad loses his hearing.

• 1:52:07Speaker 01

  And, and that particular day of the bombing.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  Anybody who's old enough to understand that, that was a very significant moment in American history because anybody who's watching knows just, especially in the running community, knows just how important that moment of a marathon finish line is. And it's such a celebrated event. And that's something that we hold so dear, not just as athletic, as athletes, but as Americans. We celebrate at finish lines. We celebrate at sporting events. And for that to be attacked, it was just unbelievable. Obviously, fast forward a year later, I am standing on the start line and it takes

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  me nine hours, eight, eight or nine hours to get to the finish line. But I will say this, I don't know if you ever run Boston, but Boston is set up to where they put the hardest part of the race at the end. And I'd never run. I didn't know anything about jails. I had done tough things before in the army, but I'd never done an amputee. I didn't understand the exertion, the energy cost that amputees, they have to pay. Running on running blades is far different than running with a normal body. You, you burn way more calories. I, I, I think yesterday I burned like 8,000 calories. This is just, I mean, it's, it's crazy. But that particular day, I go into one of the medical tents. And the medical tents they got at Boston are a little bit more nice than the medical tents

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  they had here. Nothing against New York Marathon, loved it yesterday. But Boston medical tents at the time, man, it looked like club mad up in that joker. They had cots, they had pillows, they had those, those green wool blankets, they had hot soup in there with your little onion in the bottom. And you could just sip it. They had hot cocoa in there. It was a cold day. Dog, it was so good up in there. I go into the medical tent. I start laying back. My guy, my guy's like, hey, we gotta get out of here. And it's on Facebook. I got it somewhere on Facebook where I just don't have it anymore. I have

• 1:54:23Speaker 01

  nothing. And, and we're at mile 18. And I don't know, and I haven't even gotten to the first of the Boston hills yet. It's going to get considerably harder as we go on. I just don't have any answers. But when I go in this tent, what I don't recognize is my, my guide is like, hey, let's get out of here. As I'm leaving the tent without answers, there's two other young ladies leaving the tent too. And what I don't understand is three, maybe two hours after I leave the tent, they're still behind me. And they, they, they, they tell me this. We get to Beacon Hill. As we turn on Beacon Hill, then you turn on, on a road, and then you turn on Boylston. As I'm going to the finish line,

• 1:55:08Speaker 01

  those two young ladies, they tap me, just like everybody was tapping you yesterday, and they wanted to talk. And they said this, they said, hey, because of you, we're gonna finish this marathon. What you don't know is when you left that tent, we told each other, if you keep going, we're gonna keep going. If you stop, we're gonna get on this train and we're gonna go home. We're gonna call an Uber, we're gonna get out of here. As long as he keeps going, we're gonna keep going. And it, it just let me see that in life, they're going to be people that are waiting for you to fail or succeed. There could be some people that are waiting for you to succeed so they could succeed. There

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  could be some people that are waiting for you to fail so that they can give themselves an excuse to fail. It just, it just, it just let me know. That was another one of those lessons where, hey, maybe this ain't for nothing, man.

• 1:56:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. You're getting that affirmation right away, or that, that kind of confirmation that this is a worthy path.

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  It's a worthy path. And I can, I can be jaded, I could be jaded about this happening. I could want things to be the way that they used to. Or I could do what your wife said. And hey, look, use it for good. Look at this in a manner to where, hey, look, this is a gift, bro. Use it to bless people. What are you doing sitting around sulking because you, you got dealt some bad cards, man? Keep playing the game. Nobody quits playing cards just because you get dealt a bad hand. No, what do you do? You keep playing. Hit me

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  again. Hit me again. We don't quit playing cards because we got some bad, no, we just learn to play better. And that's what I had to do. But I just had to figure out how to play this game a little bit better.

• 1:57:10Speaker 00

  You're a real life Lieutenant Dan. You just have, you have the choice of having a better attitude. Lieutenant Dan with a good attitude, a positive attitude of service. And I know you've done stuff with the Sinise Foundation. They like built you a house, right?

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  Man, let me tell you, I grew up watching, yeah, the movie comes out in 94. I go in the army in 95. I used to watch that movie every day, every day. I, back when you had VHS, we just bought the tape. Or maybe we recorded when it came on TV, whatever it was, but we watched it every day. And, and in my wildest dream, I would have never thought that I would be hanging out with Lieutenant Dan. I would never have thought that I'd be hanging out with Gary Sinise all the time. Like, I just got a text from Gary before I came to New York. Hey, man, hey, thanks so much for what you did for the foundation out in Cali. I'll tell you, I was in California. It was to represent the foundation. And

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  I was just like, wow, in my, in my wildest dream, I never would have thought this. But Gary, he's like our Bob Hope, I guess, for that, for our generation. And yeah, I live in a house that's, that's totally mortgage free in Sugarloaf, in Atlanta, Georgia. I live on a TPC course. It's beautiful. I grew up, I grew up in like a mobile home. I grew up in a trailer, man. Getting, I mean, like in the poorest part of North Carolina. And now I live in a, in a, in a great place in, in Atlanta, man.

• 1:58:45Speaker 00

  You mentioned that when you did the Boston Marathon, like you didn't, like you didn't know, like, how am I gonna do this? Like, how do I run on these things? It was a whole education process of like figuring that out and learning how to do it. And then I kind of entered this picture with you yesterday. This is a new experience for me. Like, I don't know, I don't know how this works. Like, you know, how am I, what am I, what are the needs? Like, how do I show up for this person? Like, how, how do I support them? Because your needs are going to be unique. And you kind of took me through like kind of what you needed. And, and I learned some things that are, if I thought about it for a second, were, are kind of obvious, but I, it never occurred to me. The first

• 1:59:27Speaker 00

  being that your center of gravity is like, you know, four feet higher off the ground than the average person.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:35Speaker 00

  What does that do to someone's balance? Like, all of the weight is way up top.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:59:40Speaker 00

  And you said, you know, the big thing is kind of running interference and, and being sort of like, security for me because people want to give me high fives or they bump into me.

• 1:59:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:50Speaker 00

  And I can fall really easily. Like, I never thought about that.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. You saw it more than, than Joe saw it. Because you were right beside me or right behind me the whole race. You saw, I couldn't help but give people high fives. It just doesn't feel right.

• 2:00:06Speaker 00

  I was running behind you and I had my arms spread out at one point when it was really crowded because people were just getting really close to you. And, and, you know, I came close to tripping you like, I don't know, at least six times because I was running next to you. And I was like, because you, you have this wide gait, like the, the blades swing really wide.

• 2:00:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:00:24Speaker 00

  And I got into trouble with that. And I was like, I need to like, make sure that people aren't coming up behind you too close.

• 2:00:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:31Speaker 00

  Or wanting to high five you in a way that you feel obliged to do it. And then you're off balance and you fall down.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  I couldn't help it. I just, I saw that there are people. And I, like, I don't know if you saw it, but yesterday I did it with the amputee that was slower than me.

• 2:00:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  I couldn't help but, that's part of who we are as people.

• 2:00:49Speaker 00

  That was an interesting encounter, actually.

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  He was, he was hurting, just like I was hurting in 2014. My running blades had broken. Everything had gone wrong that particular day. And I just saw myself in him where nothing was working. But I still had, I think we must, we might have ran into him at like mile 14 or something like that. Maybe somewhere in Brooklyn or somewhere in Queens. But it was like, I've been that dude before. And I know where it feels like it's not gonna happen today. I'm doing the very best I can. I'm giving everything I got. And that finish line isn't budging. It's still so far away. These mile markers are not happening fast enough. I want to be at the end, but I'm right here. And, and I wish I could have

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  told the guy, hey, look, and this is what I would have told me back then. Hey, forget counting the miles, man. Just be here right now. Like, be here present right now. Be right here on mile 14. If you're on mile 14, be right here. The more time you spend wanting to be at 26, the more you're gonna burn through way more energy. Because you're gonna be wanting to be somewhere where you're physically not. What you do is you are all in, in this mile, right here.

• 2:02:07Speaker 01

  I was I was guilty of it wanting to be at the LED screen yesterday on 23 coming up that hill. I wanted to be at the LED screen, but we were almost a half mile away. But that's where you create fatigue at. And the and the great thing that that Joe did yesterday was, hey, instead of wanting to be way down there, let's just make it to that next little little light. And those little red light right there, we'll run to that and then we'll take a break.

• 2:02:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:02:32Speaker 01

  And what they did was for me and what that would have done for that young man was, hey, you don't you now don't have to worry about going way down there. You don't now have to worry about trying to make it to year 50 of a marriage. Now you don't have to worry about making it to year 20 of of a of a job. Hey, let's just get to the small goal right here. Let's get to that fire hydrant right there. And now your race is not 26 miles anymore. Now your race is to that to that stoplight right there. Forget about what's beyond there. Can you get to there? Yep, I can get I can get to there. I think you do it. Great, let's get to that. But but that's the epitome of living in this moment.

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, we are on that red light and we're right here, but that I can get to. Maybe I can't get to the end of the of the marathon right now, but what I can do is I can get to that. I won't worry about beyond that. I can I could put all I got into here to there. And we'll worry about the rest when we get there. And it was a succession of us doing that. And that's what I wish I could have told that young man yesterday. Bro, don't worry about getting to the finish line. Let's get up this bridge right here.

• 2:03:45Speaker 00

  He was, I mean, the energy that I got from him is he was pretty closed down.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:50Speaker 00

  Like, he couldn't even receive what you were what you were trying to say to him.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Let me just say, you have a way of of of knowing exactly what I was thinking in that moment, too. I was like, yo, you see it too.

• 2:04:06Speaker 00

  You were trying to, you know, crack him open and he he wasn't having it. And maybe that was just a protective mechanism or a defense mechanism. But, you know, it was a it was it was it kind of was strange, I thought, you know?

• 2:04:20Speaker 01

  Because I because I'm the very person

• 2:04:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  that could unlock it for him. But I'm also the very person that he would probably be the most defensible. Maybe like I ain't got it right now. But look, hey, when you're fatigued, it's very hard for you to for you to feel any kind of encouragement because you're constantly bombarded with the voice on the inside. That voice has so much of a place. Sometimes it doesn't matter how encouraging the outside voice is. You just get stuck on knowing that this ain't easy and it almost becomes abrasive. It it becomes like noise where you're like, bro, stop, stop, stop.

• 2:04:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was kind of repelling you a little bit.

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  And his buddy was like, hey, man, get on from here, man. His buddy's like, hey, bro, get get off my here.

• 2:05:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  But I think for respect, they was like, OK, I got what you're trying to do.

• 2:05:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. All right, second thing. Non-obvious until you think about it and then it's obvious is the fact that you have far less surface area on your body than you would if you had your legs. And so that compromises your body's ability to offload heat.

• 2:05:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:26Speaker 00

  And so you overheat much more easily than a normal person would.

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:30Speaker 00

  I never thought about that. So your heart rate's running higher. And so a big part of this whole thing was every time we hit a hydration station, we had to like get a lot of water so that you could like douse your body and try to offload that.

• 2:05:43Speaker 01

  But all right, Joe would come back with like two cups, right? Joe would run, he would get two cups. He's doing website, Joe would come back with two cups and they were like they were like this full. When you turn around and you came back with like four or five cups, I was like, bro, let me hug you.

• 2:05:58Speaker 00

  Throwing shade on Joe. He's your he's your main man, dude. This guy has shown up for you.

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  Joe came back with two cups one time and I was looking at him, I was like, you.

• 2:06:07Speaker 00

  No, Joe is there for you 100%.

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Now, hey, look, look, Joe is not, I wish you guys see him, but that's my guy, man. I I met Joe back in 2015 in odd circumstances. But that dude has been an angel for me. I never would have thought that somebody would be so gracious, so so much of a beautiful person to invite me into their life in in such a in such a tough time in their life. And from the day that I met the guy and over the years, it's probably been what? I met him in 2015. It's 12 years now, 11 years now, almost 12, where God sometimes just brings people into your life that you don't even know how influential they will be until until sometimes with people it's too late.

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  But for me, it was just right on time. But he turned around and was there for me when I really needed to get out of that whole COVID, like get out and do something different, get back to training again. I had fallen to a place where I was doing a lot of hand cycling and nothing against hand cycling, but I knew that there was something bigger on the inside of me. There's there's things that I could do that were tougher. There was challenges that I needed to tackle with running. And I didn't have to stay on the hand cycle. I didn't have to do the the the wheelchair. I could still run where I could. And Joe came along and was like, hey, look, man, let's do something. Let's let's let's do at the time it was London. It was London, I needed a London bib.

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  And crazy circumstances, but we ended up running London maybe a couple of years later. But we did Chicago three times right out the gate, trying to get Boston qualifier. And it just a just a great dude, man. But yesterday you kept showing up with four cups of water and I was like.

• 2:07:58Speaker 00

  Only because I didn't want to have to run back and forth anymore than I had to.

• 2:08:02Speaker 01

  You came back with, I remember the mile. We got to the end of Manhattan, we were getting ready to go into the Bronx and you showed up with four cups. And these jokers were almost all of them were full. I was like, bro, if I could buy you flowers right now, I would. Yeah, I would give you a bouquet for them jokers right now.

• 2:08:20Speaker 00

  That stretch you're talking about on the Upper East Side when we're headed towards the Bronx. It's a false flat, like it looks flat, but it's actually an incline and that plays with your head.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  Joe had two cups, I was like.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  But that that was just some of the some of the some of the funniest things happen in some of the most turbulent times of your life. And if you could find the wherewithal to find the humor in it, it'll give you a little bit more staying power. Just looking at those moments where it was just like we would see a funny, we would see somebody that's walking funny or we would we would, you know, laugh at something and it would just it would get me out of my own, you know, like fatigue. Great times yesterday, man. Great times, bro.

• 2:09:08Speaker 00

  You said before we started recording that that you didn't want me to pull any punches. You wanted you wanted a hard interview.

• 2:09:16Speaker 01

  I do, I do. And not just because I want you to be a hardball, but I need people that got the balls enough to ask me questions that everyone else is afraid to ask. That that forced me to go into that dark room way in the back of the corner of my life

• 2:09:39Speaker 01

  and open that door and face whatever's in there. Because without that, what you end up doing is you just keep passing it by again and again and again. And you live your whole life being afraid to go down in that in that in that room. And that will manifest it into other fears in your life. So help me do what I'm afraid to do.

• 2:09:58Speaker 00

  Right, well, let's let's get into it. I mean, the the the entry point for me is

• 2:10:04Speaker 00

  asking you honestly, for you to respond honestly to the question, what are you using all of this, the running, the marathoning, the speaking, the external validation? What are you using all of that to run away from or avoid in your life?

• 2:10:28Speaker 00

  Because we're all running towards something and we're all running away from something to some extent or another.

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:10:37Speaker 00

  Because you can you can hide in the marathon world and everyone's going to pat you on the back. But when your head hits the pillow every night, you know, there's some unfinished business that you just haven't yet attended to that needs a little bit of attention in your life. And it could be psychological, it could be relational, it could be anything, frankly.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  I am afraid

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  of.

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  Being

• 2:11:11Speaker 01

  normal.

• 2:11:14Speaker 01

  I'm afraid of going back to being normal.

• 2:11:18Speaker 00

  What would normal mean?

• 2:11:21Speaker 01

  Normal used to look like this. And keep in mind, we're talking about from this side of the river. Normal would be like

• 2:11:34Speaker 01

  having a D average in high school. Normal would look like being afraid to try out for the basketball team because you're afraid you get cut. Normal would be like being afraid to go ask the girl that you like in high school

• 2:11:55Speaker 01

  for a date because you're afraid that she's gonna turn you down. Normal would feel like really giving your all and trying to raise your hand and answer the question because because you think you may know the answer that the teacher's asking, but you might get it wrong. So you don't ask. That's what normal would feel like. And I never want to go back there again.

• 2:12:21Speaker 00

  Because that would mean?

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  Because that would mean that maybe this whole ride meant nothing.

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  Maybe this whole journey meant nothing. Let me say it even even closer, that this whole journey was for nothing. That I didn't learn anything from this whole journey. That maybe I'm the same size as I was then that I am now. And I really hope that that's not the the issue. And I validate that feeling by going out and doing these magnanimous feats of running marathons on running blades where I have every excuse to tap out and I don't. I try not to rest on that being who I am.

• 2:13:11Speaker 01

  But I try and say that I do that. And what I do is a representation of who I really am. I want to never get too close to what I do is who I am. The title master sergeant. It's great. But I ain't who I am. Who I am is a reflection of what that dude did. Who I am is a reflection of me getting into that ocean in Florida and giving it my very best and coming up short on a full Ironman. Why? Because I really am not good at sighting in open water. And I really haven't figured out how to swim as good as I can. I probably should have figured out how to breathe on both sides sooner than I did. But

• 2:13:56Speaker 01

  I'm not normal. I'm not. I'm not afraid of trying. And and I'm okay with trying and coming up short. But normal means that I didn't even try. Normal means that I ain't even put the wet suit on. Normal means that I didn't even try to train. It used to be like this. If I don't ask her for her phone number, then I don't have to worry about getting turned down. And if I don't get turned down, then that's a win, right? Nah, man. That's the old philosophy. If I don't try, then I don't lose. And if I don't lose, then I win. Nah, dog. That ain't the way it work. This is the way it really works. If you try, you could lose.

• 2:14:42Speaker 01

  And if you do lose, then that experience of you losing is a win. Depending on how you look at it, but it's a win. She don't give you her phone number. And guess what? You're a better man because of it, because you taking that no, it builds character, man. If you don't take that note and you don't, you don't build character, you don't know how to take a loss. And if you don't know how to take a loss, now how can you be a better you? You're the same or maybe even smaller than you were before. You gotta be able to take these licks in life and be able to be a better person for it. How you gonna? How you gonna be?

• 2:15:25Speaker 01

  How you gonna be called a champ if you haven't lost? I I get it. Yes. Rocky Marciano. Yes. Floyd Mayweather. Never lost a fight. Okay. The truth of the matter is, the heroes that we really root for,

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  they took Ls. Brady lost some Super Bowls. Do I need to remind you? He lost two of them here in this very city. Or because of this very city. But we call him the greatest. Not because he won them all. Dude lost some.

• 2:16:00Speaker 01

  But he stayed with it. Muhammad Ali, we call the greatest. He ain't win all his fights, man. He took some losses. He took some losses at the end of his career, but we call him the greatest. Why?

• 2:16:13Speaker 01

  Ain't because he won them all, man. It's because he won some. He won a lot. And we saw him still win in defeat.

• 2:16:21Speaker 00

  All right, man.

• 2:16:24Speaker 00

  I'm of two minds with what you just said. On the one hand, like deeply inspirational and I appreciate the message that you shared. Uh, there's another part of me that also feels on some level like what you just said is an artful dodge to my question.

• 2:16:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:16:42Speaker 00

  The valid part of the answer was this fear of

• 2:16:47Speaker 00

  returning to your definition of normal and what would that represent, right? What I was asking you to do is to

• 2:16:57Speaker 00

  share with me areas of your life that remain blind spots. Where you can kind of shroud yourself in this identity that you've crafted as this inspirational figure uh, that allows you to not really have to look at these other parts of your life that are maybe not operating as well.

• 2:17:18Speaker 01

  Joe, you're no longer the dirtbag.

• 2:17:22Speaker 01

  It's rich.

• 2:17:22Speaker 00

  You asked for it. Like, this is like yesterday when I was like, this is what you, this is what you asked for. This is what you signed up for. You asked me to push you a little bit. So this is my way of like trying to push you.

• 2:17:33Speaker 01

  You dirty so and so. All right.

• 2:17:36Speaker 00

  Hey, man, I wouldn't have gone there. You you you specifically petitioned for this.

• 2:17:42Speaker 01

  All right. There's a part of me that's still embarrassed by what I look like.

• 2:17:50Speaker 01

  There's a part of me that's embarrassed by how I still walk.

• 2:17:59Speaker 01

  There's a part of me that's afraid that I can't protect the people I love.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  If something were to happen, there's a part of me that's afraid that I won't be able to provide for my family.

• 2:18:16Speaker 01

  And I'm the one that they look to.

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  There's a part of me that feels like I'll come up short when I'm needed the most.

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  There's a part of me that feels like that I'll embarrass

• 2:18:32Speaker 01

  myself and the people that are counting on me

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  because I make a stupid decision.

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  And all these things could happen, no matter what these circumstances are. But right now.

• 2:18:49Speaker 00

  They're all very normal human fears. You realize that?

• 2:18:54Speaker 01

  They they are. But when you are in a situation to where

• 2:19:02Speaker 01

  that thing is so glaring, you tend to become polarized on it because it's right here and you're dag on face every day. So it it yells for the attention of this is why you'll come up short. Or this is why people look at you and stare at you. Or like, here's, here's one. And this is probably as of late.

• 2:19:27Speaker 01

  I kind of avoid going to elevators sometimes. Not that I have choice. But I travel a lot and I'm always around somebody that is like, so what happened?

• 2:19:40Speaker 01

  And sometimes I don't want to.

• 2:19:41Speaker 00

  Be in a trapped environment where there's no exit, you mean?

• 2:19:44Speaker 01

  And I gotta be. And I gotta be on.

• 2:19:47Speaker 00

  Right. Because there's an expectation that especially if someone knows who you are, that when they encounter you, you have to be like 110%.

• 2:19:58Speaker 01

  And sometimes you don't want to be. Maybe sometimes you don't want to. Okay. Yes, we're doing an interview right now.

• 2:20:05Speaker 00

  You want to be the Gary Sinise Lieutenant Dan.

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  Sometimes I want to be. Sometimes I don't want to talk about at all, right? Like yesterday.

• 2:20:13Speaker 00

  Or just just because of how you look. Is that the only thing that like people want to talk to you about?

• 2:20:22Speaker 01

  I don't know how you just did this. But

• 2:20:27Speaker 01

  I don't even know. I don't even think you know you did it. But you just tapped into a space where I was thinking about the other day where I was like, yo, what if this never happened? Could I go back to being unnoticed? Because I blend in, I look just like everybody else. Would you be okay with that? What if you had to go back and and go to the gym and not be able to get the prime parking spot at the front of the gym anymore? Or what about if you walked into the VA and they didn't roll out the red carpet for you?

• 2:21:07Speaker 01

  What if you had to give back that house because maybe you don't need all the adaptations that this house has? And what would you do if you had to go back and just be a regular dude with Gary?

• 2:21:20Speaker 01

  Would you be okay with that? And I don't know if I would now.

• 2:21:24Speaker 00

  This is where it gets interesting because I think it's also very human to have an attachment to the attention and the sense of specialness that you have.

• 2:21:39Speaker 01

  No, man.

• 2:21:40Speaker 00

  You know? Dude, I'm with you. Trust me. You know, like it's its own, it's its own kind of addiction, right? Like it's nice. We were talking about this out on the course, like.

• 2:21:53Speaker 01

  So I'm so glad you ran with us.

• 2:21:54Speaker 00

  Like a lot of people like giving you attention and I was getting a fair amount of that as well. And I was like, yeah, I like it. Like it's, it makes me feel good. And you have to be careful about that because that, that's just, it's feeding your ego in an unhealthy way. It's great if it's an acknowledgement that the work that I've done has had a meaningful impact on them.

• 2:22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:19Speaker 00

  But downstream of that is what it does to your ego.

• 2:22:23Speaker 01

  But how do you know when it's doing that though?

• 2:22:25Speaker 00

  Leads you into, you know, kind of an unhealthy place.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  The, one of the greatest blessings is that you ran yesterday because typically I would have to high five everybody that.

• 2:22:36Speaker 00

  I mean, Gary Sneed's gave you a house. You get all this attention.

• 2:22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did.

• 2:22:40Speaker 00

  You're like, in your normal life with two legs, you ain't getting all this attention. You're charismatic and you're fun to hang out with, dude. But like, it would get capped.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  It would, it would, it would. In the military, in the military, I had, I had a great, I think I have like a similar personality. But I think sometimes what, what happens in life is you become a magnified version of whatever it is that you already carry on the inside of you. Circumstances magnified or they minimize it. I think for me, it magnified, I would like to think it magnified who I already was. But yesterday.

• 2:23:15Speaker 00

  God's like, God's like, you're a good candidate for this like double amputee stuff because like you're charismatic and people are going to like you and you know how to get people to pay attention to you. And this is a good equation. So I'm, this is, this is the recipe I'm going to give this dude.

• 2:23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hey, so like yesterday, you, 100% what you were just talking about.

• 2:23:40Speaker 01

  God gave you a set of skills to where you not only could do this well, but you could also handle, bro, it must've been a thousand people come up to you or yelled, like the whole time, like the whole time. And I was loving it too. Cause I was like, man, hey, pour it on. Because usually Joe is always telling me, hey, bro, you gotta take off your headphones, man, or you gotta turn down your music. These people are in here and, and Joe is like, yo, nah, man, you, you gotta hear all this right here. These people are loving you. They giving, they give me all this, man. You're awesome. You're great. And it happened the whole day yesterday. But for you, you took so much of the, all the pressure off me to where I normally have to be like, yeah, ah, thanks. What's up? God

• 2:24:23Speaker 01

  bless you. All right. Thanks. Hey, don't let me catch you. All that stuff right there. They were giving you all that love. And I was like, man, thank God, Rich. You took the pressure off me. But I got the chance to see how you handle it though. And not once were you like, all right, yep. Hey, thanks, man, whatever. Bro, you took it all in stride. You took it like from the first person that told you, hey, Rich, I respect you, to the very last person. You gave everybody the same level of thank you. It means so much, man. Thank you. I'm just grateful for you saying that. You made every single person feel like that. And for me, that was like a great lesson. I was like, hey, man, I don't have to give everybody the same amount of love, or I don't have to give this person

• 2:25:07Speaker 01

  less than the first person. It was like you stayed constant the whole day. And I don't know how you did that, but I just looked at you. I was like, okay, that's what it looks like at least. Sometimes you have to have that reference point.

• 2:25:18Speaker 00

  Well, it's not losing sight of like what a privilege that is.

• 2:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:23Speaker 00

  To be in this position where you're impacting people where they feel like they want to go out of their way to acknowledge that and have a moment with you. And if you can't show up for that moment and be present for them and give them an experience that will like validate what they wanted to share with you.

• 2:25:44Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:25:44Speaker 00

  Then you've kind of lost the plot. And also they're going to walk away from that experience like with a rearranged notion of who you are, because they obviously approached you because they think of you in a certain way. And if you kind of act in a way that is not consistent with that, that's the only real life experience they've ever had with you and probably ever will. And they're going to completely change their perspective on who you are. It will rewrite that history.

• 2:26:14Speaker 01

  You just said this earlier. Doesn't that put the pressure back on you to be on when maybe you don't feel like being on?

• 2:26:22Speaker 00

  Sure. And it's a small, but it's a small price to pay. I mean, I did, there were a couple of times, maybe like even when you weren't aware where those things were happening, but like it was interfering with my ability to like, like serve you, like I was getting water for you and someone wanted to like stop and like, and I was like, no, I can't, I'm no, my job, my job is to like, make sure that you're, you know, help Joe take care of you. And so if it got in the way of that, like I wasn't as.

• 2:26:51Speaker 01

  Do you remember at the finish line, at the finish line, you did one of the coolest things ever. And I didn't want, I didn't want you to, but you did this right. I was like, um, no, I, I, I just want to go, uh, sit down. And the young lady was like, hey, look, hey, uh, wait, Rich, do you want to go to VI patient? Uh, do you want to do this? And they were basically rolling out the red carpet for you, but you was like, no, man. Uh-uh. Um, but let's just do what's right for Cedric right now. Forget all the other stuff. But that's what I always want to be one day. If fame should ever come my way,

• 2:27:29Speaker 01

  I would want to be the same as I would be in disaster or in, in need or in, in troubled situations as I would be when things are coming my way very easily. I, I wouldn't want to accept something in turbulent times that I wouldn't accept in great times or vice versa.

• 2:27:48Speaker 00

  Well, I think you're, uh, in good stead to be able to acquit yourself in that way based upon the experience that I've had with you over the last 48 hours.

• 2:27:59Speaker 01

  I, I hope so, man. I hope so. You did that with every single person that wanted to come up and give you love. And I was like, wow, that is way I want to be.

• 2:28:10Speaker 00

  So Joe approached me, uh, to get involved in your world and, uh, you know, do this thing with you at a time when I was still like, I had this ambition of doing the New York City marathon to kind of celebrate turning 60 and like this recovery from the surgery. But in all candor, I was like thinking about myself, you know, I was like, this is what it's going to be like, and I'm going to do this. And, and like assisting another athlete wasn't really in my playbook.

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:28:47Speaker 00

  You know, I was like, no, I don't want, I wanted to be, I wanted to be, you know, like, this is my story. You know what I mean? And so I kind of like bristled at it.

• 2:28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:56Speaker 00

  For that reason, and also because I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do it. And then to layer on top of that, oh, you have to carry some responsibility for another person felt like overwhelming and too daunting. So initially I was like, yeah, I don't think I, I don't think that's what I want to do. But then I sat with it and I thought about it. And the longer I thought about it and sat with it, the more I realized like, oh, this is actually exactly what I should do. Like, because I need to, I need a cure for my self obsession and I need a way to like, like kind of, uh, put my ego in timeout a little bit and make this about something more important than me and my little

• 2:29:37Speaker 00

  whatever, you know? And I was like, God doesn't give you anything you can't handle. And this opportunity like is like, this is an amazing opportunity. Like, so I'm like, yeah, I want to do this.

• 2:29:49Speaker 01

  All right. Can I tell you something?

• 2:29:50Speaker 00

  Without, without like knowing what I was getting involved in. Um, and let me just finish my thought.

• 2:29:55Speaker 01

  Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

• 2:29:57Speaker 00

  And I got to tell you, Cedric, yesterday was one of the best days of my whole life. It was an absolute unforgettable peak experience.

• 2:30:11Speaker 00

  To be there for you, to experience the greatest city on earth on its greatest day and to feel like all the love from that crowd and like travel that 26.2 miles and just make it to the finish line, you know, with you, for you. It was just incredible, man. It was a real honor and getting to know you and kind of surfing off of your inspirational vibe, uh, was, was really a real gift. And you gave your gift to so many people out on that course yesterday. And it was just really beautiful to like see that. And so

• 2:30:51Speaker 00

  I just wanted to thank you for that experience and thank Joe for recruiting me and enlisting me into it.

• 2:30:59Speaker 01

  Man, that meant more than you can even understand, bro. I, uh, I, I, I needed to hear that. And I thank you for, for saying it like that. I don't want to run over what you just said by me saying anything else. That needs its own space to breathe. So I thank you for saying that in the way that you just said.

• 2:31:24Speaker 00

  You're welcome. And maybe we can, uh, end this with leaving the audience with something to chew on. You know, obviously what you experienced is not something that, you know, most people are going to have to go through. You know, we all have our New York City marathon. We all have our, our, our IED moments. Um, we all have our Everest to climb in our own unique set of circumstances. So how do you distill down from your set of experiences, something that the viewer or the listener can take away? Like, what is the message that you're trying to communicate through your life and through your engagement

• 2:32:09Speaker 00

  with these difficult physical challenges?

• 2:32:13Speaker 01

  I would, I would definitely start with.

• 2:32:21Speaker 01

  Put God first in your life. Whatever you pray to, whoever you pray to. For me, I, I, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But for me, I know that there's people that, that believe in so many other different things, but have a relationship with your Creator first. Number two, be able

• 2:32:44Speaker 01

  to embrace

• 2:32:47Speaker 01

  the tough, the tough days. And I know we all say that the same, but golly, we're all looking for shortcuts in life. We all are looking for hacks. But one of the greatest hacks is sitting right in front of us. And it's called difficult moments, difficult days. And I know this is gonna sound so contrary to popular opinion, but difficult moments in life is a life hack.

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  If you can take unfortunate circumstances and see the engineering into you becoming better or it creating an opportunity. How many millionaires have been created because we had unfortunate circumstances? And COVID, people had to quit careers and change and pivot. And it became something that they grew out of. Life is a series of that happening again and again and again. But what we do is we take those unfortunate circumstances and we chalk it up and we put it in this pile over here. Ah, it sucks. Truth is, that belongs over here in this pile. That was your come up.

• 2:34:01Speaker 01

  That was your fast pass to get to the front of the line. I need you to stop taking the tough days and complaining about them and look at them differently and put them into, okay, that happened for me.

• 2:34:21Speaker 01

  Not to me, that happened for me. I could actually take this circumstance and I can engineer the outcome of that circumstance so that it could help me, but more importantly, so it can help us. That's your way out. That's your way up. Find a way to bless somebody else. Everything that we did in the race yesterday is, is what I ask humanity to do. When you are struggling, when you're mile 22, find somebody that is struggling too.

• 2:35:00Speaker 01

  Give them all you got. Encourage them, put your arms around them. If they keep running or not, do your part. Give to that person that's hurting. Whether you can give resources, but most of all, just give from your heart to the people that are struggling, especially when you're struggling. Make a friend.

• 2:35:22Speaker 01

  Along this journey, it's so easy for us to isolate ourselves. And we could have done that yesterday. There's so many opportunities to make friends. Like I, I looked, I looked on my Instagram today and it's so many people that was just like, yo, you incredible, this is incredible.

• 2:35:40Speaker 01

  Sure enough, throughout the whole year, there's people that are coming up because of what we did on a race day in Chicago somewhere. And that love reverberates. Make a friend along this, this, this race, you know?

• 2:35:55Speaker 01

  Find a moment to, to push it and give it all you got. Find some moments to where you need to reserve and, and, and, and save some energy up. Don't hit the gas too soon before you get to your goal. We, we were at places where we probably hit the gas too soon. Cause I was feeling good and we're so close to the, to grabbing this, this success, this moment. We could get there. I hit the gas too soon. So make sure you're paying attention to the resources and energy that you do have and don't squander them. Make sure you're tactical patience. We could have taken off on the Verazano Bridge. We did, we walked up it.

• 2:36:33Speaker 00

  We were on the Verazano Bridge. The race had just started. We're like one and a half miles into it.

• 2:36:40Speaker 01

  Yes, we are.

• 2:36:42Speaker 00

  As far back as I could see in the rear view, I couldn't see a single person.

• 2:36:46Speaker 01

  Nobody.

• 2:36:46Speaker 00

  And I looked in front of us, not a single person. And I was like,

• 2:36:50Speaker 01

  What are we doing?

• 2:36:51Speaker 00

  Cedric, like, what are we doing here? We're having the unique experience of run, apparently 60,000 people are running this marathon, but I can't see a single one of them.

• 2:37:01Speaker 01

  A single one.

• 2:37:01Speaker 00

  And you go, tactical patience.

• 2:37:04Speaker 01

  Well, we gonna reel all them dudes in. I said, I said, Rich, bro, we about to reel all of them dudes in. I got a fishing line right here. Here they come, baby. I'm reeling them in right now. And hey, sure enough, all of those people that were ahead of us, we passed a lot of them, man. Some people we never caught, but, but in those moments, I, I knew that, man, it's not about me passing them or them passing me. It's about me settling in and finding the dude in here to, to, to fight all day today.

• 2:37:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'm a big believer in negative splitting life.

• 2:37:37Speaker 01

  Bro, that if we had a negative split yesterday, we had positive.

• 2:37:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think we got there, but.

• 2:37:45Speaker 01

  But I looked at every, I looked at every mile and I was like, oh, okay. It kind of told the story of the day. I looked at this mile and I looked at that mile. I looked at this pace and I looked at this heart rate. And I was like, okay, it kind of tells the story of where I was and what I was doing and what we were doing as a team. And I was like, okay, the next race, I can kind of, I can kind of gauge what I could do better. I could kind of gauge what I need to, to, to, uh, to sustain. But that was yesterday and it was, it was a gift, man. It was a gift and it was only for November 2nd.

• 2:38:18Speaker 01

  Today's November 2nd, but I, I want to say this. It's so funny that you've been asking about my dad. Today would have been his

• 2:38:27Speaker 01

  75th birthday, I think.

• 2:38:28Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:38:30Speaker 01

  It's so odd, November 2nd. It's so odd that it's the second.

• 2:38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is birthday, man.

• 2:38:37Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:38:38Speaker 01

  And I was wondering why, like, where are these questions of my dad coming from? It's pretty odd, man. But hey, I just want to, I just want to thank you. I hope that, that, that the lessons that were learned yesterday, I just want to share these marathon lessons for people throughout the world. It's so much that you can learn in a race or on, in an endurance journey that are so good for life. God, life is a race, yes. But the lessons that you learn on a marathon course or for you, an ultra marathon course or a super long swim, these are the same lessons that work in life, man. You gotta make a friend.

• 2:39:23Speaker 01

  You gotta use tactical patience. There's gonna be times where the weather is, is hot, it's cold. There's gonna be people that trip you up, not because they're trying to be in, in, in the swim, in the triathlon swim. There're gonna be people that kick me. They don't know that I don't have legs, but you gotta be able to roll with the punches. No pun intended, but you gotta be able to roll with them and keep moving, right?

• 2:39:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're gonna get kicked and you're gonna get punched. It's like a bar fight in there, but you just gotta keep swimming.

• 2:39:54Speaker 01

  Man, hey, one of these days, I'm gonna hold you to this. Me and Joe are trying to do to, we're trying to get to Cape Town. Trying to get to Cape Town, but the bibs are really, really thin. It'd be great, it'd be great. And we could run it all back in Cape Town. Maybe this year, maybe next year, whenever. But it'd be great for us to put this back together, uh, in Cape Town.

• 2:40:16Speaker 00

  I would love it.

• 2:40:17Speaker 01

  And, and my next full Ironman. I need, I, I know my, my buddy Jim Melton, who's listening to this podcast. He loves you. He met you yesterday. He was my swimming guide for my full Ironman.

• 2:40:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember that guy.

• 2:40:30Speaker 01

  He, that dude loves you, him and the, him and his team, Sarah and all those guys, they love you. But I would love for you to be out on my full, my next full Ironman. It doesn't matter, you don't have to guide me through the whole thing, but on one, on one of the three parts, it'd be great.

• 2:40:47Speaker 00

  All right, well, I'll, I'll put that in my pipe and smoke it. In the meantime, uh, I raise a toast to you, my friend. I will drink to your message.

• 2:40:56Speaker 01

  Let me get the.

• 2:40:56Speaker 00

  In my go brewing NA beer.

• 2:40:59Speaker 01

  You better believe it.

• 2:41:00Speaker 00

  Cheers. Uh, for all of the, uh, people out here who, who have enjoyed, have been regaled, inspired and educated, uh, by Cedric's message. I think you know that this guy's an unbelievable public speaker. So if you're looking for somebody to come to your event or your corporation, I think you just found your guy. So for those people, where do they go to learn more about you?

• 2:41:28Speaker 01

  CedricKingSpeaks.com

• 2:41:32Speaker 01

  and all social media chan, uh, channels, uh, Instagram.

• 2:41:35Speaker 00

  Cedric, you're at Cedric King MSG, I think, right?

• 2:41:39Speaker 01

  Cedric King MSG is my social media handle, but Cedric King Speaks is my website.

• 2:41:45Speaker 00

  Right on.

• 2:41:45Speaker 01

  Courtesy of Mr. Joe.

• 2:41:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, did Joe do your website?

• 2:41:49Speaker 01

  You better believe he did.

• 2:41:50Speaker 00

  Did he do it in the middle? Did he do it in the middle of running a marathon?

• 2:41:52Speaker 01

  Close, close, close. He did it right, we just did Sydney. We just did Sydney, uh, a month, two months ago. And he did it while we were getting ready to do Sydney.

• 2:42:04Speaker 00

  All right.

• 2:42:05Speaker 01

  So yeah, that dude right there.

• 2:42:06Speaker 00

  Well, maybe, so, so Joe, if I join you guys on another one of these, will you redo my website? Hundred percent. Yeah. All right. I love you, buddy. That was, that was such a treat. You're the man.